Archive for the ‘Ranting’ Category
Updates – Strange Days.
I’ve been mulling over even mentioning this, however someone reminded me that I sort of asked for this junk to happen by getting involved. The problem with me is, If I see someone in trouble, if I see a crime being committed or somebody doing stuff they simply should not be. I have a tenancy of getting involved. There are people out there who don’t want me involved, they don’t want you involved. So they attack people like me to frighten and drive away. I’ve seen some evidence of this happening, especially lately.
I cannot keep quiet about this stuff, because if you keep quiet, it gets worse, if you keep quiet, they win. The people who are doing this are bullies and if you allow bullies to win even a little bit they become bigger bullies. We all lose when that happens. You – me - everybody.
Last week I went to the regular Scientology protest in Downtown Clearwater. Clearwater is a special place to Scientology, it’s a place they make a majority of their income and even in these tough economic times (I believe) they are making a profit in Clearwater. Things to remember about Scientology, it’s not about religion or freedom to them, it’s all about the money.
Protests in Clearwater are boring for the most part. We don’t have people running out and randomly assaulting protesters like in other places. We don’t seem to have the viscously rude bull baiters (bull baiting is a Scientology skill where they make people sit around and insult each other. It’s startling when you first see it, then when you find out that they actually go to school to LEARN how to insult people it’s kind of sad.)
Last week was different. We had (what I believe) were at least four “operations” running against the protesters. I’ll describe a couple of them. We had anomalous cars with Scientology bumper stickers slowly cruising around, there were several people walking by who stopped, pulled expensive SLR type cameras out and made a big deal about photographing the protesters. A couple of bikini clad girls alternately rode bikes and strolled past the protest – like five times. It was all noticeable and rather unusual.
And the one which really burns me up, towards the end the protesters were camped out at Cort and Ft Harrison, this is the main drag to the beaches and there is always lots of traffic on weekends. I observed a car pull in across the street from us, a small boy of no more than nine or ten got out. He started walking towards us, then turned around and got back into the car. He did this several times until finally “mom,” the driver of the car got out and fairly pushes the kid across the street. He came over to us and started talking about porn site he visits, all they while recording us on his cell phone.
That’s just too much! I mean, you have got to be freaking kidding me!
This could all be a coincidence. The kid, the bikini girls and the other things I didn’t mention might all be just random occurrences, but I don’t belive so. Because another thing happed much closer to home.
I had an incident from one of my co-workers. He’s a fellow we hired some years ago, a pretty smart guy to tell the truth. A bit reckless, but he knows his stuff.
I tend to keep work separate from the protest thing (other than I’ve made my employers aware of it.) I don’t as a rule bring it up unless other people do first (which they do from time to time.)
This guy has always seemed a bit, I don’t know; odd to me. He seems to know his stuff but there are strange gaps in his knowledge. Like he seemed unaware of a lot of popular “geek” culture that several of my collages and I enjoy.
He’s also constantly trying to sell something, you can hear it the way he pitches his voice. He brags about how good at selling he is. He also regularity comes into my office to tell me about some new hacking tool or whatever. I’m polite to him, but really – I’m not into breaking into computer systems.
The other day, he walked by my office and said in a loud voice “How’s project Titstorm going?”
“Titstorm” was some thing regarding an on line. protest against Australian Government web pages. I’d heard about it but I was not otherwise involved. I tend to shy away from illegal activity as a rule. (Duh!)
Well I approached this gentleman and asked “why do you think I wold have anything to do with that?”
He said, “because you run proxy servers in your office!”
“I certainty do not” I said. (which is absoulutly true.)
He said “you are blatantly lying - you always do that!”
The conversation went downhill from there. We were in front of our immediate supervisor who eventually put a stop tot he whole thing. I spoke to the supervisor about this and how upsetting that line of questioning was to me. You see, among other things I do computer security work and accusing me of such a thing is like asking a police officer how his bank holdup went last night.
Work handled the thing to my satisfaction, but I’m a bit disturbed about the larger aspects of the issue.
I don’t know if my colleague is a member of Scientology and frankly I don’t give a flaying damn. He urged us to buy products from Sunbelt Software once (a Scientology company,) but otherwise he has not attempted to bring his personal crapola to work. (until now.) The fact that he’s running scans on me is troublesome, the idea that ‘somebody’ at work has been putting pressure on my bosses has been in the back of my mind, but I don’t like to be paranoid.
So anyway, here is how it’s going to work. I’m not doing anything illegal. If somebody think s I am, that’s their problem – not mine. Take it to the authorities. Stop playing little kids games.
As for Scientology. your reputations(s) proceed you. If you get me fired from my job, I’ll get a nice vacation where I can document and ‘publish’ the bulls&%t you people pull, not just on me, on everyone around this community since the mid 1970s. Then I’ll get a better job. You get me arrested on some bogus crap, I’ll let my record speak for me. You try to mess with my reputation? People will know what you are up to, lots of people. My reputation is for me to create, not for you idiots to mess around with. You create your own flaps.
You’d better worry about your own reputation for a change.
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Avatar – it Might not Suck!
That new Tarzan flick – what’s it called again?
Avatar – now I remember!
Firstly; I know Hollywood really can’t stand James Cameron – at least the working stiffs in Hollywood can’t stand him. “Cameron – he freaking drowns people” they say.
He brings in the bucks though – the bean- counters and the suits like him.
So he did Piranha 2 which had some cute chicks in bikinis, some pretty good cinematography (really!) It didn’t completely suck even as a grade B monster flick, or was it grade C?
He did Terminator which was an awesome low budget Science Fiction flick, Terminator Two which was a pretty good big budget action flick. He did Aliens which was pretty cool for a grade A Monster flick, then the Abyss, Titanic and a host of others that made da bucks. If he wanted to film Jesus Christ getting whipped until we all feel sick to our stomachs, the suits would let him.
Oops! Someone else already did that (my-bad!)
OK so he wants to do an animated feature that mixes live action with CGI, but seamlessly. He wants monsters as characters but they have to be utterly inhuman and be computer animated, but based on real actors. He wants to, not only scratch design every artifact shown on the screen, he wants to design a whole new camera technology. He wants to do this in 3D, he wants to film actors and have a computer translate them into his monsters in real time. He wants to design a realistic alien biosphere – realistic aliens and all that junk.
And he want a pony!
The suits say “OK, just bring us the bucks!”
So he makes Avatar which is concocted from every Science Fiction book or movie he’s ever heard of. It’s going to be fresh and original….. Hu- what?
The movie is also the most expensive in history – and it’s a Tarzan flick!
Basic Tarzan movie is – white guy gets left with savages, they freak him out for a while, he starts grooving with them. Since he’s a white guy and we “know” he’s better than they are he ultimately out-savages the savages. This is a trope and it’s been done by everyone from ERB (Tarzan – John Carter and all those Pellucidar books.) it’s been done as a Western (Dances With Wolves.) It’s been done in several Japanese novels and movies (Shogun and “The Bushido Blade”come to mind.) It’;s been done in countless comic books etc. Basically it’s been done to death.
It was even done n a little movie called “My tasty Frenchman” – but the protagonist gets eaten in the end.
So let’s see if I understand this, Cameron just made a movie that’s the biggest worn out plot evah! The only one that even comes close is “boy meets girl.” And guess what sports fans! Plot for Avatar is;
White guy becomes doe-eyed ten foot tall blue monster on distant planet that humans want to rape. White guy finds that he likes being blue-furry critter, a lot! (big surprise his life sucked anyway.) He meets naked blue furry, doe-eyed SHE monster and they do the nasty under a rainbow waterfall or something. He finds out that humans are going to strip-mine the whole place and build the biggest WalMArt ever, white guy decides blue furry monsters are people too, even if they don’t have WalMarts and big honking guns. White guy fights back for what it right and just. Only he uses bows and arrows while the humans use their big honking guns.
White guy gets his blue furry ass blown off and wakes up in his human body again. Gets docked for the time he went native.
OK; perhaps Cameron can pull this thing off, the film LOOKS fabulous, what I’ve seen of it (which is darn little.)
I mean, why is it 3D? I have never seen a 3D movie that was really enhanced by the process. Basically, I can’t tell if stuff is 3D unless it’s right in front of me anyway. My eyes are too close together and so are yours. Why do you think marksmen close one of their eyes?
Also, there are a buttload of out of work Science fiction writers out there who would kill to get involved in a flick with a tenth of the budget of Avatar. Can we get some real writers for a change? I’ve seen Hamlet done with no set and almost no props, it was still Hamlet. You can spend a billion dollars to dress up a pig – get ghost writers and do a big book deal, and it’s still Sarah Pailn.
Avatar might be a very enjoyable story, but so far all they publicists have been saying is “ooooh look at the pretty lights!”
It might not suck, but so far it’s hard to tell! I hope it doesn’t suck. Then again, I’m too poor to see it in the theaters anyway. Sorry James!
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Coffee and Crazyness!
I did my mocha and writing ride again last night, into Downtown Clearwater.
I happened upon a protester at the corner of Cleveland and Ft. Harrison. He and some friends were doing some kind of anti-government 9/11 thing. I had a hard time reading their signage. It was all hand written by a sharpie and really difficult to read in the dark. It said “Most people still think Saddam did 911.”
He seemed earnest in his beliefs although it was difficult for me to tell exactly what he believed in. He was well aware of Scientology but he had some strange attitudes which lead me to suspect he was a Scientologist or very sympathetic to them. As a matter of fact he mentioned a connection with the CCHR which he characterized as an organization that was independent of the church. He said that lots of people in the CCHR are not into Scientology (that’s news to me!)
At the same time he didn’t seem too sympathetic to Scientology itself. It was a strange mixture. He was into satanic stuff or so he said. He seemed to think that would shock me and he mentioned two or three other things that he was dead wrong about. Like who actually authored the book “A piece of Blue Sky.” He mentioned the Jack Parsons Hubbard ODO connection like this was supposed to be news to me.
I should have known better because his sign when I got close enough to read it extolled the virtues of http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/main.htm, a pro conspiracy smorgasbord that’s been making the rounds for the past few years., Zeitgeist makes convincing noises but completely misinterprets history and short-strokes all over the place.
He was very vehement in his dislike to “psyches” as he put it. All pharma is evil, his Mom was on Prozac, and she got off of it and committed suicide, see! That proves Prozac made her commit suicide!
(Um yah, sure; I’m sorry about your mum dude!)
He tried to get me to talk about Scientology, “I’m your friend! You can tell me about what you know” he said. I informed him that I don’t think of him as a friend since I had just met him and knew nothing whatsoever about him. “Well I think of you as MY friend,” he said.
Sure buddy! The only people who talk that way are trying to pull one over on me.
I’ve noticed that a lot lately in Clearwater. I’ve bumped into some very chatty people who seem to dislike Scientology, want to pump me for information. They use the term “psych” a lot. (Little protip Peter; Most people don’t use the word “psych” outside of Scientology and certainly not as a derogatory term.) I’ll also try to forget that Downtown Clearwter has about as many cameras on the public street as Fort Knox and from some of the stuff Scientology has placed on YouTube, they are probubly picking up and *recording* conversations.
Also; I’ve noticed that most people who utter the word psych don’t seem to understand the difference between Psychology and Psychiatry. That’s kind of a giveaway;I mentioned to this fellow that Psychology and Psychiatry are about as different as hairstyling and surgery, he gave me a funny look.
I always find it strange when people criticize stuff they know nothing about. Would it not make sense to actually read up on the subject and find the real flaws instead of just making shit up? Of course you stand the risk of understanding what the mental health industry is really for, it’s not some nutty bunch of guys in thick German accents trying to tell you that “man is just an animal!”
**
“Baez,” the portly Mexican-looking Flag security guy ran out to make sure I wasn’t hassling all the Sea Org people walking around. (Hi Baez!) Someone probably ran into his office to tell him the evil SP was spreading evil or whatever evil SPs do. ( I got to work on my German accent!)
I think he’s one of the guys who was a petitioner on their goofy injunction. If so he’s publicly stated that I’m a crazy person who might very well cause harm to Scientology members (like murder them!)
Because of my craziness!
I might do something drastic!
Instead I went over to Starbucks, got a mocha and wrote for a while. (Sorry Baez! I really hope your barracks inspection went well this week! I remember those when I was a kid in basic! Barracks inspections were a bitch! (Giving them and getting them!) I think it’s nutty to be doing that kind of shit as a forty+ year old man, but I am the crazy one!)
There is a protest scheduled for this Saturday, 10:30 at Clearwater Coachman Park. Bring a mask and water. They say that they will march until their water supplies run out which in this heat won’t take too long!
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Obligatory 911 post .
(pic related.)
I’ve been thinking of a few things, I often do that.
On this seventh anniversary of 9/11 my thoughts turn to the events on that day. There is very little one can add to the story. I was at work; we heard planes crashed into the two World Trade Tower in New York and another hit the Pentagon. I watched horrified as thousands of people were crushed to death when the first tower fell. I listened to emergency crews as their voices were streamed over the Internet. I watched the ultimate snuff film, live on the television screen
Nothing can be the same after that.
What can I add to this? What nugget of small wisdom, what insight? What keen observation can I submit from thousands of miles away and seven years removed?
What have I learned?
I learned one thing.
I learned about higher purpose.
Many people talk about higher purpose.
President G. W. Bush talks about higher purpose when he explains why we invaded Iraq. GOP vice President candidate Sara Palin talks about higher purpose when she says “God supports our causes in the Middle East.” L Ron Hubbard spoke of higher purpose when he wrote “Keeping Scientology Working.” Adolf Hitler spoke of a higher purpose when he wrote “Mein Kamp.” (Great Godwin’s law Batman!)
Seven years ago, 19 young men sacrificed themselves for a higher purpose. They sacrificed themselves to bring a message to us in the most graphic terms; they punctuated their message in spilled blood. They told us that our higher purpose is to go to war against Islam. They told us to go to war, they gave us our marching orders and like a herd of sheep we followed, like dogs we obeyed. 19 people did this, to the US. We reacted against our best interests because of 19 people.
A higher purpose almost always means, turning a bit of yourself over to another, allowing yourself to be overcome with some other person’t vision. Allowing your truth, your epiphany to be controlled by somebody who is NOT you. This is why 19 young men boarded some jetliners in 2001 and crashed them into buildings. They didn’t do that because they were bad people, they did it because they were filled with a higher purpose. One that dictated crashing planes into buildings and killing lots of people was a good thing. They were filled with the idea that trolling the US, making us attack countries in the Middle East would serve their interests. And they were right! They did it before; the Soviet Afghan war was instrumental in diminishing the Soviet Union.
I say; beware the higher purpose. Beware when someone tell s you what to do or how to think Beware when someone tells you that you must do something. Beware when someone tells you what to believe, beware when someone tells you who to vote for and beware when someone tells you that the ends justify the means. The ends almost never justify the means. The higher purpose will plunge your world into chaos, it will destroy your family, your home and it will eventually destroy you. It is the root of evil because it allows people to become like animals. It allows people to blindly follow without intellect, without research, without forethought, without thought. Do I mean you should never listen to others? No! Learn from others but always temper their knowledge with your own. Seek independent corroboration for everything. People lie and that’s just the way it is. (That’s Michael Garibaldi‘s law BTW.)
We live in luxury, like few others in history. But we are a warlike people, a people who fanned out across this land and took it for our own. Uncaring that others were here already we created a vision of paradise where very few want, very few starve, most have an education and most important of all, we are allowed to make choices. Even the poorest among us have enough to eat, that’s almost unheard of even in this day and age where thousands starve to death, daily!
We are powerful but with that power comes a terrible price.
When we succumb to the higher purpose, we can lose the freedom to choose. We can lose our right to do positive things for ourselves and our community. The big stuff takes care of itself ultimately, but we need to take care of ourselves. As a culture we need to put those horrible events of 911 behind us and move on. Move on to a bright future where the advances we have made in technology, sociology, and medicine can be applied to others. But we have to give up this notion that we export our society on others. Some of them don’t want it and we must respect that. When it is their time, they will make the choices, they will make the right choices for them. If we are to export one thing it is the right of other people to choose their own way.
There is a storm coming, it feeds. It feeds on ignorance, it feeds on hate. It feeds on a higher purpose that was created by those who would tell you how to think and how to live. True evil lives there, an evil that caused people to be burned alive, fall thousands of feet to their deaths or be crushed seven years ago. An evil that sent our young men to fight a war so that we can have revenge.
We must awaken and understand that our higher purpose is to understand! Why else do we have intellect? Why do we have a mind and a will? Why should we follow? The paths are before us and we can make our own if we are courageous enough to try.
Sheep follow, dogs obey, humans should reason. We have no business as a society to follow the orders of 19 martyrs!
We must reason, each of us to ourselves, the country, our way of life depends on this! We were given to the tools to do that, it’s such a tragic waste if we don’t.
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Dark Nights, Bright Days…
Well on Friday, Deb and I went to friend’s house to take in the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies.
Beijing Olympics?! I remember when we called the city Peking and no round-eye set foot there. On Friday we were treated to a “spectacular-spectacular” the likes of which is seldom seen outside of Pyongyang.
Networks make note! I would watch and buy your sponsors products if you could get broadcast rights from the North Koreans.
What we saw was really impressive-over the top entertainment full of good old Chinese values. There were thousands – tens of thousands of performers including cute little girls on peter-pan rigs. People marching around the outside of a giant hollow sphere that lifted slowly out of the arena floor (I started shouting “AAAH! It’s a MISSILE!”) They had huge floor mounted LCD screens , fireworks that created local fog alerts (they grounded all vehicular traffic in Beijing to keep the smog down, then burned enough magnesium and gunpowder to smoke up the whole place. )
(A few days later the news services were full of a story about how some of the fireworks were faked.)
We made lots of catty comments throughout while being impressed with the immense effort and choreography. It really was spectacular; I can’t wait for closing ceremonies.
The parade of nations became the “Parade of Costume” along with our parade of catty comments. We liked the folk costumes of some countries. Russia had a strange combination of blazers over their traditional embroidered tunics. Each by themselves would have been OK, the combination looked silly.
Hungry had the worst one, red flowers over stark white dresses for the women, which made them look like they had been machine-gunned.
The US athletes looked dorky in their Disneyish – “Revenge of the Boatnicks” get-up.
I think our illustrious President must have picked those uniforms out.
Bermuda was pretty bad too, red shorts, black socks and tennis shoes. What were they thinking! You don’t HAVE to dress like a tourist!
Saturday was a complete wash, Deb was out of the house so I set about fixing our washing machine, it has a debris build-up problem that a helpful service technician would have charged us $200 bucks for. I did it and got my hands all cut up. The insides of our washing machine is like a wet-dirty car engine with razor blades in random areas.
Deb and I went to see the new Batman flick . Short version; It’s an excellent psychological thriller masquerading as an action film. I loved the interplay between the various characters, then they broke for relatively boring action bits, then more interplay. The late Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker was marvelous. I’ve always thought of the Joker as the perfect villain, insane; no particular goals or motive, working towards anarchy and chaos but uncaring of the consequences should he achieve it. “Ledger stated that his Joker is a “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.”
I think he got it perfectly. Overall the film was a bit hard to follow, it was edited into the current – edgy style, whatever they call it. The editing was harsh and unforgiving. Many- many tracking shots to the point of absurdity. I really liked that the film was on location most of the time, Gotham City was not some weird backlot fantasy of giant statues (that always annoyed me.) The city looked like a freaking city for once, nice touch.
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Catching up; Interesting Times 7.0
I’ve been off-the-blog for a while, the wife and kid were away for two weeks and I’ve been taking a break. Last Saturday there was another Anonymous protest and I ambled over to Clearwater on my trusty bike to take in the locals and see what the Anons were up to.
Like the other protests, this one had a theme. It was “Spy vs. Sci,” to highlight Scientology’s intelligence gathering wing the Office of Special Affairs. Naturally they deny that the Office of Special Affairs (OSA) is any more than a PR department, just like they deny that harassment and vicious litigation are sacraments in “their religion.” What? Litigation and harassment are sacraments? How can that be?
Scientology’s core belief is that anything said by L. Ron Hubbard is true and correct. Furthermore they have to read and sign a document called “keeping Scientology Working” which says in part,
(Hubbard describing non-Scientology-like thinking.)
This point will, of course, be attacked as “unpopular”, “egotistical” and
“undemocratic”. It very well may be. But it is also a survival point. And I
don’t see that popular measures, self-abnegation and democracy have done
anything for Man but push him further into the mud. Currently, popularity
endorses degraded novels, self-abnegation has filled the South East Asian
jungles with stone idols and corpses, and democracy has given us inflation and
income tax.
So in other words, it’s OK to attack anyone who refuses to join Scientology or is skeptical of it. That’s because freedom, democracy and all of that crap has produced nothing of value anyway. Only good old fashion tyranny works in human society.
What kind of twisted- demented person could sign such a piece of drivel?
Drivel or not, this is part of the Scientology religion and is therefore a sacrament, that is assuming Scientology is a religion at all.
This is of course utter nonsense, East Asian jungles are full of stone idols put there by thriving civilizations that lasted far longer than this one has. The only reason Scientology was able to grow at all is because of a tenancy in our society to be liberal and tolerant of new ideas.
Hubbard was nothing if not completely ignorant of history which in my experience is reflected in his followers.
But the point is that the basic tenants of Keeping Scientology Working are twofold, 1) Anything Hubbard said is correct and true. 2) any idea that Hubbard did not come up with is false and harmful. Then Hubbard makes additional statements demanding that his ideas be applied to everyone on Earth.
It’s difficult to read that stuff and NOT get a sense of dread urgency about how far this organization has run afoul. It’s my understanding that this document is read and signed each time a person takes a course. It is a sacrament of their “religion” to hold the document in high esteem and hold the tenants described in it as truthful. Anyone who holds those words in the center of their being is (in my estimation) sick. Don’t take my word for it! I’m not a doctor. Read this crap for yourself!
Said Hubbard. In Keeping Scientology Working.
“We’re not playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn’t cute or something to do for lack of something better.The whole agonized future of this planet, every Man, Woman and Child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology.”
I suppose if this were not a recipe for a fanatical belief I don’t know what would be. I can only hope some of these people pinch themselves and realize what they are looking like to the rest of us. Upon reading KSW a few times, it’s no wonder some Scientologists behave like loons.
***
So the protest last Saturday was small, about 30 people picketed downtown Clearwater. A couple of people wandered off the main group and were reportedly accosted by Mr. P. I’ve heard this story repeated, it seems when the Anons are alone or in small groups, Mr. P. pops out of the woodwork and begins demanding names. They had a couple of blokes covered from head to foot with voice distorters and they told me that Mr. P. seemed pretty frustrated with them.
I met a couple of fascinating people at the protest. I didn’t see Mr. P. or “KP.” But I have bumped into people who know them. Reputations run deep and the folks who have ended up running things in Clearwater have some very interesting pasts. “KP,” has got some interesting history in Clearwater.
Some of the most fascinating stuff is happening away from Clearwater though. There are minor incidents happening every day it seems like. People get accosted, followed, one lady says that some people followed her into a bar and she stayed there for over five hours. In Stockholm a couple of young girls grappled cameramen, in Battle Creek MI some folks marched out of an org and tore up protest signs.
One of the strangest tales comes from Hollywood California, a lady brought her kids to a protest and when they broke for lunch they found a Scientologist barring them from entering a restaurant. It’s unclear if the restaurant owners cared one way or the other but the Scientologist supposedly physically prevented the kids (five and six years old) to take off their masked of not go inside. The police were finally called and the Scientologists fled. Apparently the woman has nothing to do with the restaurant, she just took it upon herself to block people she didn’t like from this public place.
Now… where have I heard this before?
I remember now!
There is another story, again from California (LA this time) where they roped off several city blocks for some gathering. Apparently they were making people who live in the area walk three or four blocks out of the way to get to their homes, one old lady on a walker was seen to accost the people guarding the empty side walks, “L. Ron Hubbard doesn’t run my life,” she shouted… “Bad people!” and pushed passed the guard..
Bad people indeed, the evidence of just how bad is mounting.
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Signs and Portents in Clearwater 3.0
Some of you may have read my previous post about Scientology businesses putting up lots of identical “No Anonymous will be served” signs back in April.
A few days ago, just before the last “World against Scientology” picket, a petition circulated around downtown Clearwater by some of the Clearwater merchants.
Can you guess what it says?
“Dear Mayor Hibbard;
We, the merchants of the Cleveland Street District, are writing to you to ask for your help.
In the last months, a group of masked protesters have come into downtown Clearwater to demonstrate. They have told the media and the City that they are peacefully protesting. This is far from the truth and their actions are detrimental to the conduct of business in downtown. There have been three protests, and in each they have walked through the downtown area yelling and screaming.
Their actions have prevented customers from coming into our stores. Saturday is a very busy day for us commerce-wise and having literally no sales for those three days hurts our economy and not just our personal economies. We have employees that need to be paid. We charge sales tax. These people are making it difficult for us to attract customers downtown.
The City of Clearwater is putting a lot of effort into revitalizing downtown and we hate to see it wasted due to a group of kids who should be using their time to build the community , not trying to tear it down. We do not like having to be here and they, with their masks, odd costumes , chanting and yelling, are not welcome. I do not know if the City has a law to prevent people such as this from stopping commerce as they have been doing. They do have the right to peacefully protest, but they are in no way peaceful. They are intimidating our customers (both non-Scientologists and Scientologists alike.) and we do not appreciate it.
We ask you for your assistance in this matter. We know that you have a whole city to contend with, but downtown has been in the focus of so much of your hard work.
We thank you for your attention and we look forward to helping you create a truly great downtown.
Sincerely ;
(List of 30 odd signatures.)”
I can sympathize with the merchants who signed this thing. Clearwater is nothing short of a dead-zone in Pinellas County. I live relatively close to there and seldom go Downtown (other than to patronize the Starbuck’ or go to a protest. )
But to suggest that the protests are somehow effecting downtown businesses is beyond silly. I’ve been living around here (other than a few years in the military) since 1974. I know how Clearwater has changed, I know how Sparkling Downtown Clearwater has become a tense demilitarized zone, I literally breath a sigh of relief when I leave that place and come back to the real world. This is nothing new, this did not start in January, this did not begin with some stupid Tom Cruise vidio leaked to the Internet. It started long ago. Back in 1975, when Hubbard’s Sea Org landed and began “Project Normandy.”
Why don’t I go downtown to do business in Clearwater?
- There is little going on there that I wish to take part in.I have absolutely no interests to learn more about L. Ron Hubbard or get my brain re-programmed by his followers.
- I have no desire to be photographed by strange people and sneered at by the dwindling number of business owners.
- I have little need to get my plates run for no reason and get accused of being a murderer.
The TL;DR reason, (besides the obvious.) is, downtown Clearwater is a creepy place where nothing happens, except Scientology.
To the west of Downtown Clearwater is one of the best beaches on the Suncoast. To the north, the towns of Dunedin with its art district, Palm Harbor with its curio shops and Tarpon Springs with its splendid history and sponge docks. To the East, the sprawling Hwy 19 corridor, full of shopping malls and other businesses. To the South, Largo, a growing suburb of Tampa , Bellaire, a charming little place with some great restaurants, Pinellas Park, has some large shopping/entertainment districts, there is the town of Seminole and then, Saint Petersburg with Baywalk, Janus Landing, the Grand Prix, great museums and I think they have a baseball team. Tampa bay is one of the top ten media markets in the US, it has a similar population and demographics as the Seattle/Tacoma Washington area.
Now, Clearwater has many things to offer — in East Clearwater that is. The downtown district and the East Clearwater Hwy 19 corridor are very different, it’s like two different planets. The Beaches resemble Downtown Clearwater like LA resembles …ahh I don’t know, Mudville? You just don’t see row after row of closed, abandoned shops anywhere else in Pinellas County like you do in Clearwater. You don’t see shops with Hubbard’s tone scale in the window or uniformed people marching back and fourth all day and night.
These cities are in no way perfect, they all have their share of problems. But all of those towns have two things in common.
- Their economies have been pretty good in the last ten years or so.
- Some are thriving.
- They do not have a strong presence of Scientology.
- They are WAY less creepy.
- They are not dominated by a single agenda, people work FOR these cities, not exclusively to get people onto Hubbard’s bridge.
Downtown Clearwater even had a nightclub, a few years ago….
http://tampabay.citysearch.com/profile/2702089/clearwater_fl/liquid_blue.html
It was closed and reopened as “The Majestic,” (with a nice lion mascot, three guesses who owned it?”)
A non-profit organization I belong to used to have meetings in a nice Mediterranean style restaurant downtown, it’s been closed for the last few years, people are using it now but the windows are frosted out, like many other businesses. There are a couple of gas stations, a Publix and a Checkers . The only business I frequent is Starbuck’s. Clearwater does have a nice library however.
Clearwater is a place people drive through to go elsewhere in Pinellas County. Which is strange because Clearwater is the second largest town in Pinellas County. It’s the county seat for crying out loud. Clearwater experienced a building boom in the past few years, just like the rest of Pinellas County. Few houses are getting built, a large high-rise apartment complex is under construction downtown with more on the way. There are a number of huge brand new complexes just south of downtown, they tore down a shopping center on the west side of Pinellas county to build it. Additionally there are lots of strange condos, all piled on top of each other. Clearwater is simply not like any other community in Pinellas County Florida.
When the merchants of Clearwater say “masked protesters are not welcome in Clearwater,” they are really saying “anonymous” Is not welcome. When they say anonymous (which is an adjective, not a noun BTW” ) they are in effect saying “People who are not of us, people we cannot identify, people who are not Scientologists, are not welcome.”
True story; I was in Starbuck’s one night last Febuary, around 9 PM and a little girl approached me, she told me that she was getting donations for the Delphi School and demanded that I put my name, address and phone number on a form. She was all of 7 or 8 years old. It was kind of odd that she only asked a few people, then her parents hustled her out. (not to mention that my 10 year old goes to bed at 9 PM but that’s quite a different rant.)
People In Clearwater are VERY interested in finding out who strangers are. When they say Anonymous (strangers) are not welcome, It is very likely talking about me, they are very likely talking about you. There are approximately 1,000,000 people living in Pinellas County, around 100,000 of them live in Clearwater. 10% of the Clearwater residents might be Scientologists. The rest are… all of us!
So, what is the message that the merchants in Cleveland Street district are communicating to the rest of us with this petition?
“Stay out of Downtown Clearwater unless you support Scientology, unless we can identify you and your intentions. Unless we can identify how you feel about our religion, stay away, don’t come here. We can and we will find who you are, we can and we will run your license, we can and we will discover your name and accuse you of crimes if we do not like you. For anyone with bad thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard is a criminal! He said so and WE believe it! We will find your crimes or we will make some up if we have to!
Do not come here, do not come here because a few people wearing masks and shouting slogans were here. THEY did not like our religion. They are criminals, they are bigots, and they are Nazis. They have bad intentions , they disrespect L. Ron Hubbard and he said, anyone who said bad things about him was a criminal, and I believe that.
Do not come here, you upset me. I have the right not to be upset by you. Even if you are doing something that is sanctioned by wog law, it is NOT sanctioned by Hubbard Law and it is not sanctioned by us! we have a right to decide what is upsetting and YOU must abide by our rules in this matter.
You; the other 90% of Clearwater residents and 99% of Pinellas county residents are NOT welcome downtown unless you have good feelings for L. Ron Hubbard and our religion. If you do not conform to our rules, we don’t want your business, we don’t want you.
Stay away… or else!
This is the climate in and around Downtown Clearwater. This is how people feel about 90% of their neighbors and 99% of the other people living in Pinellas County. I don’t know about you but, it does not matter much to me what a person’s feelings about me are, or if they have bad intentions towards my “religion.” My religion and my beliefs are none of their business and have no right to treat me like a criminal because of them. My town has a HUGE Baptist chapel, anyone protesting them? No? Why? Because they are are not trying to push things at me. They don’t usually engage in socially obnoxious behavior.
But what often happens with strong religious belief is this “feeling offended thing.” When people make arbitrary rules and attempt to push these on others, there will always be conflict. One of the “unwritten rules” in Clearwater is “thou shalt not make light of L. Ron Hubbard or the beliefs of Scientology. Thou shalt not speak of such things for they are only revealed to those who pay in advance.”
The Anons have trampled on this rule, they have killed the sacred cow, THAT is the core of all this, why? Because; those rules do not exist outside of Scientology. Because; the rest of the world does not follow laws laid down by L. Ron Hubbard. Because the rest of the world does not particularly care about L. Ron Hubbard. Because the rest of the world is not even very fond of L. Ron Hubbard. Because the powers that be in Scientology are pushing their rules into places and on people who don’t want them. Because the powers that be in Scientology have laid down their own standards, their own ethics on you and me. They expect us to be good little wogs and just follow the program.
The Anons have violated the rules of Scientology because they are free to do so. Because the constitutions in whatever country they live in is NOT superseded by Hubbard’s laws.
I’m sorry! That’s just the way it is!
Kudos to the Clearwater City Counsel for refusing to hear the request. Their comment was (paraphrased.) “We don’t need to spend very much time ruling on First Amendment issues.” That is spot on! It’s exactly correct, you folks got it in one!
This is something that “the merchants of the Cleveland Street District,” have evidently forgotten.
Why have they forgotten? Because (IMO) L. Ron Hubbard has told them to forget it!
And they believe him.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgovernment/article503671.ece
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article506348.ece
Popularity: 1% [?]
Interesting Times 3.2
With apologies to Ben Franklin and anyone I missed.
This is the way I’ve been feeling lately. I’m not alone, most (if not all ) of the people I’ve been talking to have echoed the sentiments as the Anonymous movement about Scientology. It’s a wide ranging bunch too, business people, teachers, lawyers, IT workers, housewives and moms, and fathers. People in my community know that there is something wrong with Scientology, but many have lacked the curiosity to go out and look for themselves. People need to look! The information is out there.
On the snake pic I placed the US Government at the tail end for a reason. I’m sympathetic to their position. From the Government’s point of view they made their peace with Scientology back in the early 1990s. Since it has been the kiss of death for a politician to defy Scientology they seem to be staying out of this. It would also look bad if the US Fed were to go after a “religions” organization. The hue and cry would be deafening.
But, right now I tend to go with the, “are you listening to the people around you?” bunch. There is already a hue and cry and it’s getting louder by the day. Moreover, Scientology is reacting the same way they do with any challenge. They attack, they shout and they lie. I heard the local CoS public relations person on a local radio show the other day. She was very rude, she did not allow other people to get a word in. She refused to answer any questions. She was “handling” the interview which in non Scientology speak seems to mean “being confrontational.” One caller asked her what her OT level was and she hit the ceiling.
And this was the Public Relations Director! She handled herself in an extremely unbecoming way, not only for herself but for her organization. If this is the best that they have.. I simply cannot imagine what they are planning to do next.
Although, here’s a clue. Some fellow in LA flipped off a Scientology member and got arrested for making felony criminal threats. During the questioning they pulled out photos maternal from Encyclopedia Dramatica (that awesome bastion of accurate, unbiased reporting, (be careful, it’s not always safe for work.)) The thread on Enturbulation.org can be found here.
I’m not sure exactly what happened, but according to the story. someone may have killed this person’s cat. Because Scientology’s critics frequently lose their pets in mysterious ways, he got pissed, he waxed wroth on some BBS, IRC etc. Scientology took it as a threat and had the police arrest him.
This is the kind of thing seems to happen a lot with Scientology. Tricking people, setting them up is right in their MO. Did I mention one of the fellows I believed to be OSA operatives attempted to get me to hold his picket sign for him? I wonder how many cameras were pointed in my direction?
I’ve no doubt that there has been some movement towards this kind of thing around here but thankfully, no one to my knowledge has even been questioned by the police. it’s rumored that around 50 of those C&D letters have been issued, some to the parents of minors.
Oh and; take a look at this if you are just stopping by and have no idea what I’m going on about. It’s short, to the point and makes a good case for the Anon movement.
At some point people must decide which side of the fence they are sitting on. Doing nothing is all well and good, it’s exactly what Scientology wants. It’ s what good, law abiding “wogs” do. If wogs flap their gums about Scientology they must be evil criminals, it’s written in their “holy” scripture! “If you know what’s good for you, ya dirty bigoted wogs, keep ya’ pileholes shut….or else!”
That (IMO) is the message $cientology sends out to the people of Clearwater.
If you live in Clearwater you can see for yourself what good things Scientology has brought to your community. The vacant store fronts, the lack of anything going on that is not controlled by Scientology gives mute testimony to what this organization can bring to your community. Take a look, decide for yourself.
Oh yes, let me thank all the people who came by last week. I went through a “holy crap!” moment when looking at the weblogs. I’ve spoken to so many good caring people this week. Thank you one and all!
Day visits Pages Hits Bandwidth
01 Mar 2008 106 175 193 1.85 MB
02 Mar 2008 84 157 158 811.73 KB
03 Mar 2008 94 151 153 1.23 MB
04 Mar 2008 98 208 527 5.49 MB
05 Mar 2008 95 185 260 3.52 MB
06 Mar 2008 88 150 199 3.03 MB
07 Mar 2008 88 172 198 1.99 MB
08 Mar 2008 78 158 266 4.08 MB
09 Mar 2008 76 197 291 3.77 MB
10 Mar 2008 93 164 191 2.15 MB
11 Mar 2008 104 174 210 2.25 MB
12 Mar 2008 79 139 203 2.84 MB
13 Mar 2008 77 161 223 3.00 MB
14 Mar 2008 93 185 293 3.05 MB
15 Mar 2008 97 392 1193 8.27 MB
16 Mar 2008 103 346 788 17.50 MB
17 Mar 2008 160 322 1319 41.41 MB
18 Mar 2008 2208 2932 35893 1.06 GB
19 Mar 2008 1181 1596 19791 626.12 MB
20 Mar 2008 379 671 5858 175.32 MB
21 Mar 2008 452 801 7199 215.23 MB
22 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
23 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
24 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
25 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
26 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
27 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
28 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
29 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
30 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
31 Mar 2008 0 0 0 0
Average 265.14 428.91 3427.55 100.27 MB
Total 5833 9436 75406 2.15 GB
Popularity: 1% [?]
Ye gods!
Sometimes I feel so gloomy that I need to vent,
My friend Gilmore sent me a story on BBC news, the war costs split up by families would average AT LEAST $20,000. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7092053.stm
The Saint Petersburg Times reported the thrilling news that Tropicana Field, the self same white elephant venue that was VOTED DOWN in referendum and overridden will be torn down and a new field will be constructed downtown. What was the reason? So players could bat home-runs into Tampa Bay! They have been predicting the millions of jobs that it will bring to Saint Pete, just like the millions of jobs Tampa got after rebuilding their football venue (I.E) Wha? What jobs?
Gas is about to solidly reach $3.00 per gallon and never come back. Deb and I were thinking about going out west next summer, I suspect this will not happen now.
Some kid drills a hole in a Riverview Ammonia pipeline looking for treasure. He’s now in the sock for several million in cleanup costs and possible jail time. I hope he finds that treasure!
The US Space program will be taking a giant step – backwards by re-engineering the Apollo program and what are they going to call this bold new venture to somewhere others have gone before? Project Orion! You know, like in the atomic powered spacecraft Orion of the 1950s? The small one would have been 40,000 TONS!? (It scales up extremely well because it used atom bombs for power.) The new Orion is little more than an Apollo spacecraft using 21st century technology (and some cast-off bits from the Space Shuttle. )
Big changes at work, the director of my department just resigned citing health reasons. The department’s been stagnant for some time now, this should stir things up. (That might be a good thing.)
Current peeves;
SCA !(more on that later.)
Commute time, an hour both ways and I only work in Saint Pete! I would take less time to commute to many places in Tampa!
The job market sucks around here, but not as bad as in other places.
Traffic! I want trains! (whaaaaaa!)
**
What are the good things?
I’m getting ready to shop Novel #1 again, after several weeks of rewrites it’s *maybe* ready. I’m back on my 2000 words per day (written or edited) minimum. I have a short subject to finish (the “patriot piece,” another to start “Bloody-Mary-Sue” and I need to do a complete rewrite on a novella length thing that I wrote two years ago. I also need to finish Novel#2.
I just read Charles Stross’s novel “Glasshouse.” If you haven’t run across Stross yet, (and really enjoy dense-prose post-human novels,) get his books. I read “Singularity Sky” a few weeks ago, brilliant stuff! I downloaded “Accelerando” from his web page (under a Creative Commons License.) Woot!
We had a very good time with our Japanese houseguest Yoko, her plane left last Saturday and we spent much of the weekend relaxing in between soccer games and yard work. Thank god for dishwashers and Roombas!
I have a very nice butterfly garden going up in our front yard. It’s 80% finished, now I need to start working the left and right sections of the front. We have park bench in the middle and a cool meandering pathway. Many of the plants are either “distressed” plants that I got for a quarter apiece or stuff we had lying around the house. I also planted several banana trees and a papaya.
E’ is enjoying soccer, he’s starting to get the hang of teamwork and dedication, and he’s freaking fast! He can outrun most of the other kids on his team. New we need to work on his passing and concentration.
I have an “anywhere” Internet pipe, give me my cell phone and a USB cable. My phone does Bluetooth, my PC does not unless I pug the dongle. Bluetooth is slower anyway.
Otherwise, Deb, E’ and myself are living life day to day, keeping our spirits high and our outlook hopeful. The weather has turned cool and we have shut down the air conditioning.
We can hear the wind chimes from my office atrium all across the house.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Prophetic Words?
Iraqi fighters in Umm Qasr are giving the hordes of American and Brtish mercenaries the taste of definite death. We have drawn them into a quagmire and they will never get out of it.
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (AKA Bagdad Bob)
Popularity: 1% [?]
