Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

This Whole Pennsic Thing.

It’s pretty strange to be here again. Last year we skipped it, too little time, not enough money we said. This year we decided that it could be a cheap vacation. Seems a lot of people made that decision, this place seems packed this year.

Our camp more than filled up today. It’s wall to wall. We had about a dozen people show up, most of them have small popup type tents and most of them seem very young. It’s some household from Indiana.

I can’t help but wonder why we go through all of this. Mostly I suppose it’s to create a bit of contrast. A reset switch, an opportunity to get away for a while and do something completely different.

That’s got to be it! What else could it be?

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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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Of March and Protests.

I needed a few days to digest this.

About  two years ago I decided to start going to the local Scientology protests in Clearwater Florida. Probably the most important location in Scientology.

At the time I didn’t take them too seriously. I mean people have been protesting Scientology around Clearwater since the 1970s, this new wave would probably not accomplish much. True the current wave was (this time) world-wide in scope. Scientology it seemed finally caught the attention of a whole lot of people who (like me) thought the convoluted hodgepodge of writings fo L. Ron Hubbard were, at best silly, at worst dangerous.

So with my trusty vidieo and still camera(s) I set out to defy the “beast of Clearwater” in it’s native habitat. IN February of 2008 I talked to many of the protesters, got to know them a little (not who they are but “why” they are, I respect that they want to remain anonymous.) I filmed them and I filmed Scientology’s reaction. But mostly I stayed out of their way and kept to myself. The Anons in Clearwater are an interesting bunch. They have evolved into a small but rather passionate group which follows some interesting patterns.

But the real draw was Scientology itself. It’s a brooding presence in Clearwater. In the short term it’s the largest landowner in Downtown Clearwater and people must be in good graces with it if they intend to do business there. Not many do it seems. There are just a couple of franchises in Downtown, most businesses tend to be small mom & pop affairs owned by Scientology members and there is a dwindling number of those. The Flag Service Organisation of Scientology seems to be doing a booming busness although it’s difficult to tell and Scientology tends to mask its real number in favor of hyperbola.

Most of the protests outside of the very first few have been quite calm – almost boring affairs. The Anons would march around, chant slogans form time to time. The Scientology members would scurry away as if even hearing the protesters would corrupt them . They didn’t come out to talk with the protesters and when they encountered some of the street, they acted like no one was there. In sharp contrast were places like New York, Los Angeles and Michigan where people would, on occasion come out and tear up signs or try to “bullbait” protesters into anger. There was a single incident in Clearwater where a random individual confronted protesters, began poking them in the chest and screaming until the CWPD came by to ask him to behave.

It’s been very quiet, until this last one. I went to the protest on Saturday, March 13th. We had some people from Arther Guthry’s auteroge come by. (He was playing in a nearby venue.) Soon after about seven Scientology members showed up and began asking questions, “why are you here,? what do you have against my religion,? Did you know many members of Anonymous will be spending the rest of their lives in prison for terrorism?” and so on. I wandered away and filmed some of the protesters up on Court Street, when we got back there was another surprise.

A film crew claiming to be doing a documentary was setting up. They would not give anyone their credentials but they said they had worked on a number of “true crime” things (I forget which ones and I’m too lazy to plow through the audio.) I didn’t really buy it and I don’t think any of the others did either. I had a nice chat with Film Guy’s assistant who made some noises about wanting to more about what goes on in Clearwater. He was not very convincing, on the one hand he talked about Scientology being a local Clearwater thing, then he would comment about how many buildings they own world-wide. I didn’t try to point out the inconsistency of what he was saying. If they feel it necessary to play games like this and lie, nothing I say will help the situation.

Later the protesters and I left Downtown Clearwater and traveled to the front entrance of Ruth Eckerd Hall. We were met by several Scientology “handlers” who were more or less polite, but insistent on getting people to admit that they were members of this group Anonymous. They could not get it through their heads that Anonymous is not an organisation, people don’t join it, there is (at least from my point of view) no hierarchy and no chain of responsibility. It’s not even a noun, its a verb! I tried to explain this going so far as to ask one of them to look it up in a dictionary.

Well it was interesting to say the least. the handlers clustered around me like BTs (Body Thetans)  shooting questions and avoiding subjects. For example when they would ask why I was standing on this portion of public easement I told them there was a protest going on and I wanted to witness it. This was not sufficient and they wanted to know what the protest was all about. I would start to tell them and they would change the subject. It was all a big game I suppose.

This went on for awhile until their bossman came over. They immediate backed off while the boss (we can call him PM.) laid into me. According to PM, I was a bad person because I was here.  I was invading “his” property and insulting his religion. I was part of Anonymous and therefor responsible for whatever people did under that name.

I was very polite to him, he got more and more rude. He started creeping into my personal space and began staring dead into my eyes, which is a game I play with my children. I matched him and did not back away.

This seemed to piss him off more, here I was a wog, an SP probably and I had my Training Routines  in better than he! How embarrassing for him (especially since I’ve never done the TRs.) I introduced him to someone, “This is (PM) and he’s trying to bullbait me right now.”

Then a strange thing happened. I think he attempted to voodoo-curse me! Just as I was leaving he came up along side of me (now remember I was being icy and polite to him the entire time.) He said “you are a F@#$ing lunatic” in a very loud and forceful voice.

Now with most people I would laugh that off or shoot a cherfull FOAD ! (Freak Off And Die yah!) in their direction. I don’t remember what I said exactly, it was something like “Gee, I hope that makes you feel better!” I knew instantly what he was doing, however. He was not trying to insult me, he was trying to command me. he kept repeating this odd statement, “you are a F@#$ing lunatic.”

Scientology is like a magic religion where people believe they can change their environment by taking certain courses and thinking in specific ways. They do this thing called “postulation” which is a bit like praying, if you want something you picture it and if you are powerful enough (so they believe) it will happen. With people, this postulation is accompanied by commands. When “PM” said you are a f@#$ing lunatic he was trying to command me to to become a lunatic. In other words he wants me to become crazy, I would be less of threat to him if I were and make no mistake. PM is deathly afraid of anyone he cannot control. I’ve seen him confronting people who are no threat to him whatsoever and his body language suggests that he is scared, right down to his ill- fitting shoes. PM in my humble estimation wants me to come to harm. He was, according to his intent and belief system, communicating a threat to me.

I wonder if he understands the ramifications of that? I also wonder about a group that expounds on “sanity,”   at the same time demonstrating how little they understand about acceptable behavior . The irony of this does not escape me.

I feel sorry for them. They can’t see what is going on all around them. They only look inside and cannot see the game as it really is. They lack the insight because they have chosen to stick a bag over their heads and pretend the world is a different place than it is for most people. When I say most people I’m talking about the billions who have never heard of Scientology. Some of them are getting the message. A few (and PM is one of them I’m afraid,) can’t understand and he will either snap out of it or ride this this thing to wherever it is taking him. From my point of view it certainly not to “freedom.”

However: I’m the lunatic from his point of view.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Why I can’t get over “The Road.”

Cormac McCarthy’s been around for a while but quite frankly, I’ve never read any of his stuff. I was aware of “All the Pretty Horses” but I never read the novel or saw the film (hey! I have a twelve-year -old in the house and that limits us to little more violent than “The Transformers.”)

I picked up a paperback copy of The Road at the grocery store. I literally read the thing in one sitting. Not because it’s short (It really is,) because it’s riveting and I don’t say that very often or lightly.

What is it about?

Ten years before the novel begins, some kind of calamity befalls the Earth. A father and son are homeless.They push their pitiful belongings in a decrepit shopping cart, heading south because they “can’t survive another winter.” The landscape is bleak and gray, ash covers everything and McCarthy reveals in stunningly tight prose that apparently there very little is left alive. The world is wrapped in a gray cold winter that has gone on for the last decade. “Cattle has become extinct” muses the unnamed father as he struggles to protect his son from a very hostile world.

There is little food. What remains is decade old canned goods, nearly depleted.  The pair trudge through cold burned-out husks of cities, long abandoned. There are people around, the most successful are groups of cannibals who  prey on the weak or the careless. They sweep scavengers off the road and force them to march from place to place, serving as mobile larders.  Others are kept precariously alive so that their limbs can be harvested. Fearing this fate, the unnamed protagonist’s wife commits suicide just before the two set out on their journey.  The father,not quite coming to grips with his grief  allows  it to transform into a dogged mission to protect his son.

The prose in the novel is terse and sometimes misspelled. The word “cant” is often used to replace the contraction “can’t.” It’s as if McCarthy is allowing us a peek at an old, moldering journal by someone who is long since dead and gone. In a world that few of his readers can really conceptualize.

This is not an end of the world novel. The world of “The Road” has already ended.  It ended  long before father and son set out to find a better place. Readers are left with the feeling that, despite all the struggle, despite the death of all but a handful of people, the end of all humanity has finally happened and each survivor has to come to grips with their own choices. Then  they must make peace with themselves before their own inevitable end. The father does this by focusing on his son, by creating a world-view that is only about his son’s survival.

This seems to be the subtext of the novel – or at least the part which resonated most strongly.   It’s a book on parenting (strangely enough), the father understanding that his existence is is only about seeing his child to safety. This task is to the exclusion of all else, even morality and ethics. The father is a good man at heart, but he becomes transformed into a ruthless – even cruel person by his task. The unnamed mother’s suicide too is transformed into a sacrifice, so that her husband would not have to protect her as well. It’ an extraordinary  tale of bravery in the face of inevitable and utter disaster. (Of course as a couple of people have pointed out that McCarthy may not have meant for Mom’s suicide to be a heroic act. I’m against suicide as a matter of principle so perhaps I’m mirroring my own feelings in this novel – as the author surely intended!)

If you read this book, do it by candlelight on a cold winters night and keep a window open. The chill you feel will not be from the cold!

Popularity: 1% [?]

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!

Popularity: 1% [?]

“The World is a Vampire!”

OK , so the weather has changed from steamy-hot to nice Florida Fall/Spring. This weekend was unbelievably pleasant compared with the last couple. At practice last weekend I almost got overheated.

I haven’t been writing a whole lot of late. I have not been in the mood (and I invariably hear the voice of Patrick Stewart roar “MOOD! MOOD is a thing for cattle and loveplay!” Well mood does have something to do with it. I was (over the summer) in one of those periods where I pretty much didn’t follow my own path, I followed the path of that other people wished for me and (inevitably) I had some difficulty coping. Hopefully that’s over and done with, for better or worse I need to follow my own instincts on some things and worry less about the possible consequences. As my lawyer so correctly says, don’t do anything illegal and you will be fine.

Segueing into…. I went to the Anonymous protest last weekend. it was very small; only about eight of the Florida Anon contingent were there. I didn’t make the first march but I followed them around for the second and took lots of video.

I have no idea where I’m going with this, I mean; filming in downtown Clearwater is fraught with peril. Scientology is not known for turning the other cheek and allowing things that offend them to pass unanswered. I’m of several minds on this, on the one hand I don’t like the idea of tangling with a fanatical “religiously cloaked” psychological mind game focused on extracting as much money and time out of it’s member as possible. People in Clearwater for the most part don’t like them, but they also don’t want to get involved. I quite understand! I don’t want to get involved either.

But then the other side of me starts yammering and it goes kind of like this. “The United States of America was formed by a group of people who didn’t want to make the same mistakes that were made in Europe in the previous 400 years or so. They wanted to create a better place, free of the twin tyrants of theocracy and autocracy. They wanted a system of government that was not based on someones interpretation of “teh truvth” but a system of laws that could be dynamic and change over time. A government that reformed, remade itself, adapted.

Scientology stands to challenge this concept. By the words of it’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard it blankly states that Scientology intends to gain influence in federal, state and local government and replace our current system with something of it’s own manufacture. Not just in the US – everywhere. Once this is done they will forcibly bring their form of “enlightenment” to all of humanity “clear the planet is the way that they put it.” Anyone who opposes this plan is thought to be a “degraded being” in their eyes and if they take action to oppose it, they are labeled a “suppressive person” or SP.  Once again, according to their “scripture, SPs are to be “disposed of without pity.”

That’s what they believe. This to my eyes, this is just like the Klu Klux Klan making blank assertions about white supremacy or the National Socialists talking about the Jews.

I have a huge problem with this. First of all, Scientology is not the end-all-be-all of religion. It doesn’t even appear to BE a religion (not to me anyway,) but of course that designation is completely subjective. Whatever Scientology wants to be, it has become a liability in my mind. It brings conflict and corruption to everything it touches. Hubbard had a few good ideas but his psudo-psychological programs amount to little more than hypnosis and wishful thinking. People who stay with the program think differently than people outside of Scientology and I don’t see that  as an improvement. In fact (again, my opinion;) people who sty in Scientology and adopt Hubbard’s dogmatic way of thinking don’t even communicate very well. It’s either “I tell you” or “you tell me.” There is little idea exchange and no synthesis of thought to them.

“Try it out and see for yourself!” the Scientology members shout. “How can you make a judgment without trying it!? It helped me!”

The difficulty lies in what is helpful to an individual, this can also be subjective. People claim that cigarettes are helpful or schedule one drugs. People claim that chiropractic faith healing is helpful and I have no doubt that it is – to a certain extent. Scientology could indeed be helpfully to people ,but psychological counseling would probably have worked just as well. Everyone is different and there there is no telling what will assist one person over another. Scientology is not a panacea to cure all ills. It strikes me as unscientific and arbitrary, perhaps helping people in some small way by boosting confidence but costing far more terms of money and psychological damage than benefits.

That’s just my opinion mind you, if people like spending big bucks to have some high school dropout inform them that they have to repurchase expensive courses over and over again because someone didn’t transcribe them right – that is completely their own business. I think it’s stupid and might even say that I think it’s stupid. You can call me stupid back but you don’t have the right to tell people I’m a criminal just because I think you are being a dope.

Anyway, my inner voices tell me that organizations like Scientology must adapt to societal norms (such as they are ) or perish. They need to understand the environment that they exist in and instead of trying to “handle” it, try to live with it and enhance it. An amoeba understands this.

Scientology can’t seem to do that. They want to take society over, destroying their foes and manufacture lies about them. This is right out of their so-called “scripture.” What they accomplish in most cases are poor relationships with the people around them and many unnecessary conflicts. Their friends turn out to be people just  using them – not friends at and their foes become hardened.

It’s big fat bunch of wasted effort and it has the same results, every-single- time.

I’ve been watching this group for a long time and I’m not sure they can fix themselves, the whole premise is wrong, Hubbard created a big fat fantasy for people to live in. They firewall themselves against society and when they poke their heads out they find that people have moved on and changed.

There is too much corruption in their structure, too much institutional deception, too much pressure on members and they have a terrible reputation, one that will be difficult to shake in the coming decades.

And they don’t seem to be even trying. In fact, if I’m reading the jungle drums right, they have just got started with Anonymous and things are about to get interesting.

Popularity: 6% [?]

So some more Pennsic.

Ok, so I’m a geek. I dress up in this faux roman garb, sit around in a tent and write blog posts on my laptop.

I dug out my armor today, did some adjustments and wandered up to the field to get inspected. Pennsic inspections are supposed to be this big freaking deal but I’ve never had much trouble with it. They wanted a picture ID this year, and that forced me to walk back to camp (all of five min away.) Afterward I did pickups for a while, until it started raining hard. There has been a succession of fronts coming through, today was hot and dry until late afternoon.

Tomorrow is supposed to be wet again. Deb and I might go into town one last time, I’ve got a case of gluten free beer on order and we need to do laundry.

Those camp bunnies are doing fine, all but one are eating regularly and they are starting to crop grass. They plan to release them on the final day of the war, hopefully they will be old enough to make it on their own.

Popularity: 1% [?]

More Interesting Times.

I suppose some of you have read the Sunday Saint Petersburg Times feature on David Miscavige. He’s the head mucketymuck of the Scientologyt  organization. Chairman of the Board is what they call him or the acronym “COB.” COB is more than apt because, according to the Times piece, he beats his staff members. This according to the Times is based on several high level defectors from Scientology , apparently, according to the Times, he’s got a nasty temper and uses a management style right out of Joe Stalin’s playbook.

That’s not really news to anyone following this little teapot tempest, Miscavige’s comical rages and predilection to violence have been a persistent rumor for years now.  I don’t remember when I first hear about this, five years ago? Ten? Seeing this story sitting on my driveway was…different! I’ve been hearing that something like this has been brewing for a few weeks now. They certainly didn’t disappoint!

Scientology responded in their usual ham-handed way. Their pet spokesperson Tommy Davis tried to say that it was all lies, that they never had a chance to respond (other than the three months the Times reporters gave them, other than the eight hour rebuttal sessions where reporters were blocked from leaving the room by a hoard of people trying to tell them that Miscavige would never –ever –ever hit any one.

“After eight hours, when reporters readied to leave, church spokesman Tommy Davis brought in nine senior members of the management team. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the exit and insisted they be heard. Marc Yager, Guillaume Lesevre, Ray Mithoff, Mark Ingber, all said Miscavige never struck them.”

Actually Tommy Davis rebuttal makes him sound like a complete lunatic!

Do you really think I’m making this up?

Then…THEN  he informed the Times reporters that it was the DEFECTORS who beat up people and it was Miscavige who, when he wasn’t saving little birdies had to go in  and DISCIPLINE this nest of vipers abusing his staff. (Marty Rathbun) “he’s a bastard and a coward, and he’s psychotic… psycotic!” exclaimed Tommy Davis during a calmer part of his rebuttal.

Sheeze! A simple “f%& you  no – comment” would have been 1000 times more effective. They might as well have signs around their necks which say “I CANNOT tell the truth!”

One really interesting thing about the Times piece is they publish excerpts from the Defector’s PC folders. Now a PC folder is a record of a Scientologist’s confessions. They get hooked up to their lie detector thing (which just measures electrical resistance like an electrician’s volt-ohm meter,)  Then they are asked all sorts of leading questions. like “do you have any bad feelings about our glorious leader?”  Supposedly a skilled operator can tell if a person is lying, I think you could fool such a device in any number of ways. But people are forced to confess their “crimes” and make up some if they can’t think of any.

Those PC folders are supposed to be confidential, so how did the Times get them?  Tommy Davis the Scientology spokesperson provided them to discredit the defectors! “Now they say the defectors are trying to stage a coup, inventing allegations so they can topple Miscavige and seize control of the church.”

One really funny thing is, there is a rumor going around that Scientology was so alarmed by this feature that they’ve had people going all around Tampa Bay buying up every issue of the Times they could get their hands on. I’ve looked around a bit and yes, all the Sunday edition of the Times are sold out. Having some experience in the newspaper business I can tell you that some circulation manager is rubbing his hands together in glee right now.  I can say that I did find one box with papers in Largo -  just one!. I drove by around 25 empty ones to find it.

I went to the World Protest Scientology day on Saturday, it was rather small, only about a dozen people showed including a couple of gents from Sarasota who didn’t seem to fit the “anon” type, they were both very overweight, did not protest and were going on and on about PIs and Scientology members with cameras. I told them that after the first couple of protest the Flag people were more or less leaving the protesters alone. They seemed disappointed.

However this small group made one sortie in the blazing Florida heat. They marched over to Ft Harrison and Gulf to Bay, then waved at the beach traffic and listened to the love in the form of blaring car horns. Flag hired a couple of Clearwater’s finest to make sure the Anons didn’t rob a bank or something.  We spoke with one of them who was pretty concerned that we had enough water (there were several cases.) He told me that Clearwater has several thousand Bosnians living here now and they were a bigger problem than Scientology.

One lady made a point to chew the group out saying they didn’t understand the word “cult” and they should look it up. “All religions are cults” she said.

That’s a pretty typical response here in Clearwater; most of the Scientology folk are angry about the protests but can’t seem to come up with an effective retort. Sure all religions are cults if you are not a member. If you are a member of a cult, you don’t think you are in a cult. So what?

***

Downtown Clearwater is quiet tonight; the usual people are hanging around Starbuck’s. Some Bosnian ex-patriots, some fellow pretending to read the paper. There are a few Sea Org and Flag staff marching by, I’m seeing a few dozen, never the groups of two hundred or more like I used to see.
I’m starting to get an end-game feeling. I can’t predict what the future is going to hold for this town. I’m sure it’s going to be interesting.

It usually is.

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“It’s just giving everyone a bathroom wall to write exactly what they think.” — Irin Carmon

BAD INTERNET: The panel was about the future of filmmaking, but that didn’t mean anyone had to like what they saw. “I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet,” said Sony Pictures Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton. “Period.”

At a breakfast cohosted by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and The New Yorker Thursday, Lynton wasn’t just trying for a laugh: He complained the Internet has “created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it.”

Co-panelist Nora Ephron, who started her career in print, said the Internet has had a greater effect on “our beloved print than it’s had on the movie business.” But, she conceded, “We’re in the last days of copyright, if you want to be grim about it….Stop it. I dare you.”

Found at

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Escape from Foggybottom.

Out of the cold, back to the Grind.

Things get busy at work and we find ourselves with too little time to reflect on things. It’s get up, get breakfast, get the kids off to school and try not to get too stung out at work, rinse – repeat.

I was trying to remember exactly what we did after the Inauguration. We went to the Holocaust Museum,  we tried to explain to E’ why we wanted to take him to such an awful place. He doesn’t understand that what happened to large swaths of humanity in the 19300s and 1940s could happen again and they only way to prevent it is to understand it, talk about it. I mentioned to the  students my take on the Holocaust, that it wasn’t a new thing and that it didn’t end with the fall of the National Socialists in Germany. I mentioned the Khmer Rouge, -  they stared.

We went to the national Spy Museum and the Natural History Museum. We saw the Library of Congress and toyed with the idea of getting a “permit” and doing some research there. (Alas! Another time.) We saw the Washington monument and spent much of Friday morning at Arlington before coming home.

DC has always been one of my favorite places. I’m not sure why. It’s a strange place, we have very little back home that is like it. There is an ornate nature about DC, an American baroque that is hard to define but easily recognized. DC is our place, I felt that again and other people do as well. It belongs to the people, held in common so that future generations will walk down the National Mall and gaze in wonder at what we have wrought, as I did.

Some of my contemporaries are cynics and defeatists. They say that the United States is doomed, that we are seeing it’s last days and an age of terror and ignorance will soon be our lot. But what I saw last week was nothing short of a miracle. Not that Barack Obama is black, It’s not as simple as that. Or I should say, it’s much bigger.

What I witnessed last week was an orderly peaceful revolution. One that did not include the turmoil and violence that always accompanies such things. I watched a new government take control. I watched the old commander and chief just flying away in Marine One, he had them circle the District once before departing to the airfield.

That was our revolution. We had lunch afterward.

How is this possible? In a world where other revolutions seem to require the pathos of complete upheaval and breakdown. Where millions of people are uprooted and thrown about like so much human flotsam into refugee camps. How is it we can do this, for over two hundred years without setting the great city alight and murdering those who live there? How is it we don’t have rioting and people howling for blood?

How is it possible?

The very question gives me hope.  We have a future you and I, if we are only brave enough to embrace it — love it because it is our future, and in it we can do anything!

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