Andrew Morton's Tom Cruise bio 'shocking claims'

[compared2what?]

And Battleshpk, thanks for the video. I semi-boycott Gawker for personal reasons, but good for them for drawing a line in the sand, whatever their motivation.

Frightening to see that what makes Tom Cruise LOL is the prospect of a world free of suppressive persons, given what the doctrine for ridding the world of them is.

It doesn't keep me up nights, but I feel more pity than censure for him. In fact, some pity and no censure. It can't feel good to live in that state, for one thing. And I am under no illusion that I would not think, feel, and do as he does, had I been through the process he has. Almost anyone would, and without being culpable of much more than a lapse in judgment at a point when there's not much evidence what the consequences might or might not be.

Scary.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

An internal newsletter produced by the Hubbard Communications Office, probably in the mid-fifties, asserts, “There are many to whom America and the world listens. On the backs of these are carried most of the enthusiasms on which the society runs.” It goes on, “It is obvious what would happen to America if we helped its leaders to help others. Project Celebrity is part of that program. It is obvious what would happen to Scientology if prime communicators benefitting from it would mention it now and then.”
.....
Meanwhile, the Church worked to identify itself with the dream-factory aspect of Hollywood, both through its celebrity adherents and by promoting L. Ron Hubbard’s gig, in the late thirties, as a writer of pre-feature cliffhangers and serials.
.....
A longside glowing testimonials from people—celebrities and not—who credit Scientology for personal transformation, there are stories of savings spent, lives derailed, critics harassed. Non-Scientologists tend to get a thrill from the aura of coercion and seduction—not to mention kitsch—that clings to the Church. To them, the castle is a particular object of fascination, a magnificent confection that must not be tasted.
.....
A Hollywood producer, who asked that I not use her name in case she ever needs to deal with John Travolta’s agent, recalled a brunch at the Renaissance some years ago, attended by non-Scientologist movie executives, agents, directors, and actors. “Everyone was titillated,” the producer said. “It was like going to the foreign land and seeing the exotic people.” In this case, she said, that meant some peculiar waiters, who repeatedly photographed them, rather than any recognizable celebrity.
.....
The waiters seemed like actors impersonating waiters.
.....

Ugh. Scientology in LA is Disneyland for celebrities run like a honeytrap.

Amazing how similiar are Disneyland and Scientology. "Buy another ticket, take a ride."
Same alphabet agency, different fronts.

[FourthBase]

It doesn't keep me up nights, but I feel more pity than censure for him. In fact, some pity and no censure. It can't feel good to live in that state, for one thing. And I am under no illusion that I would not think, feel, and do as he does, had I been through the process he has. Almost anyone would, and without being culpable of much more than a lapse in judgment at a point when there's not much evidence what the consequences might or might not be.

Scary.

Scary. Indeed.

I don't think there's anything unusual about Cruise which makes him more susceptible to being mentally hijacked by a cult, it's a sad thing. And yet, that's what he is, that's what he's become, and we need to be hostile to him for that, we need to call him out for being something he shouldn't be, if we really respect what he ought to have been.

I think that before the world starts worrying about whether we're exercising enough pity and being polite enough, we have to worry about whether we're not being rude enough. Things like cults and blatantly false beliefs shouldn't be respected. If you believe in Allah, I don't need to respect that to the point where I shouldn't personally tell you that Allah doesn't exist. I should, at every turn. (Granted, I may not, out of fear, lol). The vast majority of what people believe religiously is wrong, false. And yet it controls so many of them. Enough is enough, right? I don't know what would happen if a wave of realization spread across the world and people all at once abandoned their irrational religious memes. Anarchy is the usual scenario brought up. Well, I'd rather be ruled by nothing and roll the dice with people's innate sense of morality, than be ruled by religions (well, ruled by the ruling elitists who manipulate people religiously) which give birth to the most fierce self-replicating spandrels of logic and irrational "moral" dictates. We don't owe any religion any respect. We actually owe every religion a healthy disrespect. If we use a live-and-let-live, let-people-believe-what-they-want-to-believe approach, then something like Scientology could creep into actual respectability within 25 or 50 or 100 years. People wonder how there could ever be another Nazi Germany...well, imagine 100 million Scientologists. We're already in a position where Mormon belief is afforded a live-and-let-live respect, despite documents (lol, the core church gospel, actually) proving it emanated from the manipulative delusions of a fucking freakshow. Legally protecting a person's right to practice religion is one thing. It's a fundamental right, and I support it. But what I don't support is letting religions off the hook in the public domain of free speech. People have the right to believe in stupid shit in private, but we aren't obliged to respect that right in the "common area" of society.[/rant]

[Joe Hillshoist]

Thats a good point, but what makes you sure Allah doesn't exist?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Daniel Brandt cites the writing of OSS/CIA spook, Miles Copeland, and links CIA to Scientology.

http://www.namebase.org/news05.html

Cults, Anti-Cultists, and the Cult of Intelligence
by Daniel Brandt
From NameBase NewsLine, No. 5, April-June 1994

.....
Toward the end of his career, Hubbard was certainly a renegade, far beyond anyone's capacity to control him. But in the 1950s and early 1960s, it's probable that he had support from U.S. intelligence. His early expertise in mind control is curious, as well as his lifetime interest in intelligence tradecraft. Former CIA officer Miles Copeland claims that his CIA colleague Bob Mandelstam made "arrangements" with Scientology and Moral Re-Armament about this time.[24] (Moral Re-Armament is another cult-like organization; Copeland's information on MRA is confirmed by the late Jim Wilcott, an accountant with the CIA in Japan in the early 1960s, who wrote that MRA "was covertly supported and used by the CIA."[25]) Another well-placed source reports that in the early 1960s a high-level award was given to Hubbard by the prestigious American Ordnance Association. Hubbard, this source says, was "on a friendly basis with top generals and admirals and their military-industrial associates."

[compared2what?]

I don't believe I expressed any respect for a blatantly false belief or cult. I expressed sympathy for a human being.

And what's puzzling me is distinctly *not* the nature of his game.

Forgive me, I just had to add that. As a result of which, I now have nothing to express, because my whole mind has been taken over by an imperative that goes a little something like this:

Woo-Woo! Woo-Woo!

I'm going to have to go play the record now, otherwise it might be months before I'm free of it.[/i]

[American Dream]

http://machinist.salon.com/blog/2008/01/16/scientology/

Scientology fails to delete crazy Tom Cruise video

As Gawker head Nick Denton notes, the crazy nine-minute video of Tom Cruise preaching about Scientology has been floating around the electronic tubes for a few days now, popping up on YouTube, Google Video and other sharing sites, and then on blogs linking to those sites, for a few hours at a time before it gets pulled down at the request of the Church of Scientology.

The video -- which seems like some sort of Scientology pitch film, in which Cruise describes the advantages of KSW ("Keeping Scientology Working") and the dangers of SPs and PTSs (suppressive persons and potential trouble sources) -- is copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. (I've put in a request with the Church to ask about why they're pulling it down.)

Nobody knows where it came from, or why it's popped up online now, at the same time that Andrew Morton's salacious unauthorized biography of Cruise -- which the Church has criticized -- is being published.

What is clear, though, is that the Church, which is famous for its litigiousness, will have little success in keeping it off the Web. Denton captured a copy from YouTube and is keeping it up at Gawker. The video is "newsworthy," he says, "and we will not be removing it."

But you can find it elsewhere too. Search for Tom Cruise video on Digg and you'll find several blogs and video sites showing it -- this one and this one, for example.

The Church of Scientology has had a long, tangled relationship with the Internet -- there is actually a Wikipedia article called Scientology versus the Internet, a quite long and detailed one that goes down the many problems that the Church has had with the digital world.

The disputes mainly involve the unauthorized distribution of the Church's intellectual property, which makes the fight not really very different from the battle that other forces in the entertainment industry have waged against the Web.

And in the same way that the record labels are losing their war against the Internet, so too is Scientology. This video's out there, and it's going to stay out there.

Here's one version posted now on YouTube -- if it stops working in a while, don't fret, you'll find it elsewhere.

BTW, I like the spot (about 1 minute in) where he says, "Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it's not like anyone else. You drive past, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you're the only one that can really help."

Wait, so Scientologists are EMTs, too?

[FourthBase]

Thats a good point, but what makes you sure Allah doesn't exist?

Because thetans don't exist, either.
Made-up shit is made-up shit.

[FourthBase]

I don't believe I expressed any respect for a blatantly false belief or cult. I expressed sympathy for a human being.

What I'm saying is that sympathy shouldn't preclude hostility.

[theeKultleeder]

Um. Please specify what this supposedly powerful "spiritual and psychological technology" is. Thanks. Either of you.

I'll give you a piece on a new thread. In the morning, kay?

How about this:

Identifying fully with your body and denying that your real self is a formless immortal spirit is part of the conspiracy to oppress you.

You have been brainwashed to deny the spiritual and hypnotized by materialism.

Another part of this vast spiritual war for reality is believing that the world creates or controls you - this is called Behaviorism in the sciences - when in fact you co-create the world around you, and the more responsibility you take for that, the more control you have over the environment.

[theeKultleeder]

Daniel Brandt cites the writing of OSS/CIA spook, Miles Copeland, and links CIA to Scientology.

http://www.namebase.org/news05.html

Cults, Anti-Cultists, and the Cult of Intelligence
by Daniel Brandt
From NameBase NewsLine, No. 5, April-June 1994

It is a single source quote with no corroboration, and in fact doesn't jibe with widely recorded historical evidence.

Let me clarify: it is a single-source quote from a spook (how often are we to believe spooks) that links the CIA directly to Hubbard in the early days of the cult. This doesn't seem to fit with the avaqilable evidence and deeply developed narrative.

I believe the cult was infiltrated in the mid to late 60's and fully taken over in the early 80's.

[philipacentaur]

I believe the cult was infiltrated in the mid to late 60's and fully taken over in the early 80's.

And you keep repeating that, time and again -- because you have some "gut feeling" about it.

[theeKultleeder]

I believe the cult was infiltrated in the mid to late 60's and fully taken over in the early 80's.

And you keep repeating that, time and again -- because you have some "gut feeling" about it.

No, I have provided historical facts.

Like this SRI business - if you follow the evidence it appears they really were doing psychic spying work/research for the military.

Why make it out to be something it isn't? if not for a political agenda...

[FourthBase]

Um. Please specify what this supposedly powerful "spiritual and psychological technology" is. Thanks. Either of you.

I'll give you a piece on a new thread. In the morning, kay?

How about this:

Identifying fully with your body and denying that your real self is a formless immortal spirit is part of the conspiracy to oppress you.

LOL! Hardly, dude. Hardly.

You have been brainwashed to deny the spiritual and hypnotized by materialism.

Errrr, no.

Another part of this vast spiritual war for reality is believing that the world creates or controls you - this is called Behaviorism in the sciences - when in fact you co-create the world around you, and the more responsibility you take for that, the more control you have over the environment.

That's not spiritual, dude.

The world does create and control us. And we are also co-creators with the world and can control the world, and therefore can co-create the world which will co-create ourselves which will co-create the world, and so on. I mean, what am I missing there, how is that a vast spiritual war? It's just common sense. Behaviorism is real, and has been used to produce acutely planned effects in people on a large scale. Denying the reality of behaviorism is stupid. I'm sick of stupid shit. Enough, everyone, with stupid shit. I'm declaring an intellectual war on stupid shit, a global campaign to liberate reality from stupid shit. Unnecessary either/or propositions are on my list of bombing targets.

[schadenfreude]

The timing of this video 'leak', coupled with Mortons 'explosive' book gives me pause for thought.

We are all getting ourselves used to the idea that economic (and as a consequence social) breakdown is nigh. So many people are pissed off with their lives already, and the ruined economic landscape waiting for us could tip a lot of people into a weird state of mind - the state of mind that calls for a saviour, for someone with all the answers.

Step forward The New Messiah.