19 Comments

Alex, please make sure that you carefully document where the council observers are and what they're doing. I'm betting that they're purposefully out of your sight so that you can't see what they're doing, and that they're passing out forms to "passers-by" who will most likely mainly be Scientologists. Then, they'll rule for Scientology to ban your protests based on the input from these forms, which of course will be largely complaints by "community members" who couldn't even see what you were doing (unless, of course, you're being incredibly noisy, which I imagine you are not). So it'll be important, when they try to do that, to demonstrate both that they were not observing the protest, and that they were taking input from people who weren't as impacted by your protest as would be people who were actually in the area of the protest (in sight of it).

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Listening to footage, the only intense noise from yesterday was those bagpipes that played the same three songs over and over and over all day.

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What that from the protesters or from the event? I feel like if there is any venue that would demand a bagpiper play three, and only three tunes, over and over, it would be Scientology (and now that I think about it, they would probably not spring on an actual piper, but instead just use a recording).

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I watched this live yesterday on several streams.

I betting the 2 very sober gentlemen had already determined that the protesters were not the problem so were analyzing what the heck was wrong with scientology’s poor traffic control.

I’d love to read their survey.

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Just for the record, the three days of the IAS event from the inside (with the caveat that the last time I did it was in 2003, lots of things have changed)

For a week or more before the event, rehearsals and brutality. In those days there were other speakers besides Dave and of course they were all doing it all wrong. Hours of folks like Mike Rinder and Guillaume Lesevre trying to give speeches and being berated by Dave, changes to the scripts, all kinds of abuse.

The last few days they rehearse in full makeup and lights with three cameras or more. This makes it possible to edit together a perfect event video even if they screw it up at the live show.

The main event was in the Great Hall and the tent was just overflow with a video feed. We showed the famous horsey film opening on 35mm film using John Travolta's old Shinkyo projector. Then the motorized screen goes up, the podium rises from the scissor lift in the stage and Dave comes on to open the show. Lots of ways for things to go wrong. But we usually pulled it off OK.

A football truck, set up to broadcast soccer or cricket, was overstuffed with BetaCam Pro recorders for the nine-camera shoot. Piles of audio gear stuffed backstage and at the rear of the hall (called ironically the Front of House). Three speaker stacks in front and two delays blasted the sound. Probably a rental bill in the $100,000s. Miles of cable. Huge projectors for the side screens and in the tent. Even more sound reinforcement there.

Anyway, back to the timeline - do the event. Then the phone bank starts up. Maybe 30 high-powered registrars, including the voiceover talent Jeff Pomerantz, man the phones to drum up donations. This is all done in the basement offices of the Castle. It goes pretty much all night long. Last chance to get a new status before the Patron's Ball! They are expected to pull in at least a ten million dollars in those few hours while the iron is hot. Sometimes a lot more.

While the money is being raked in, the crew is kept up doing a ritual called "pickups". Gary Wiese in the Truck, as event director, reviews all the footage from the live show. If there are mistakes, like a slurred word or somebody misreading the prompter, Gary finds and flags them. Then the miscreant who flubbed goes back on stage in full makeup and lights and redoes the lines. The entire crew has to be on station for this, all the cameras etc. except of course the audience boom camera. No audience! This can go on for many hours into the night.

During the day Saturday there are seminars and tours of Saint Hill. OT Committee meetings. Lots of activities but not that many people. One year we did a demo of the wind-up record player and titanium records in the Monkey Room for example. As if anyone after a nuclear disaster is going to understand Hubbard's idiosyncratic 50s lecture style and long outdated cultural references a hundred years from now. Will they even speak English???

Meanwhile the crew is frantically getting ready for the big music show at the Patron's Ball. More cash for more equipment and cranky sleep-deprived musicians. Then the Ball itself, a chance to show off your money and how much you gave away. Catered meals and a chance to rub elbows with the rich and powerful. Then the awards ceremony, still shots by Film and Equipment In-Charge CMO Gold Jeff Baker on actual film! Then the actual music show with headliners like Kate Ceberano and Doug E. Fresh. Backed up by the long-suffering Gold Musicians.

Saturday night, everyone is exhausted but we still have to set up for the Charity Concert Sunday night. In those days it was back in the Great Hall, tons more equipment and more rehearsals with lesser acts like the Jive Aces. Large checks are presented to local mayors etc. with ridiculous chains of office making them look like rappers.

Finally it is time to pack it all up and go home. Sometimes Dave would award us with a day off in London, which was sometimes pretty cool and sometimes insane. I think his father sort of shamed him into it, because of course when Dave is in England he spends lots of time doing the nights on the town in London bit. In between harassing the other "top executives" and getting his hair done. By his personal hairdresser, flown in from the States just for his personal use.

I guess it is a lot simpler now that it has all settled into a dull repeatable routine and it is all just Dave. Probably the Great Hall is just video overflow and they show the horseys on video too. With me gone there is no one to set up that old cranky Shinkyo anyway, and it is nowhere near bright enough for the big screens in the tent.

But we can be sure that the registrars are still busy making insane deals and crush regging. That has probably been refined to a high art now. It was always all about the money.

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Wow 🤯 Miscavage is way over the top. I’m surprised he doesn’t have medical problems.

Oh wait, it’s the persons around him failing and having trouble in life.

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My guess is Defendant Miscavige doesn’t dare be on site there that long these days. He’s gotta love hiding.

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Kudos to Alex and his team! I'm certain those two fellows who showed up at the Pub with media credentials were OSA hired PIs or Scientologists. No doubt in my mind. Alex's description of their behavior fits the OSA model to a T! The council observer's conduct is also highly suspicious and sounds like they're hiding the truth that they've already made up their minds in favor of Scientology. It's been some years since I've stood in a picket/demonstration line against the cult but the memories are as real and raw as they were then: the tangible sense of alarm and watchfulness in the air, eyes daring here and there, people moving around restlessly. I think in those early days we did experience more anxiety and even fear at what OSA might do as they moved aggressively toward us demonstrators with their cameras, arms waving, and voices shouting for us to get out!

Thanks for posting all this stuff, Tony. And thanks to Alex and his team for what they are doing!

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Have fun you merry band of raiders! Songs, jokes and thoughtful signs are the way to 'raid'. So far no helicopter or a parachuting Tom Cruise. What a waste of good PR. My only wonder about this conclave is how big a bowling trophy will Trish Duggan get this year?

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Alex, thanks for the report and protests. Get lots of press.

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Bonnie Woods! Yyyeeeaaahhhh!!!!

And lovely work. The council observers are one thing. Make sure that the press is alerted to the whole council deciding what a legal protest is, before the decision is made.

And the police not getting into where the property line goes? I'm not saying that you can go stand on the pavement and demand that the claimed owner or a representative demonstrate that you are on their land, but I understand that you can demand that the owner has to demonstrate that you are on their land.

Not crossing the police is the thing to do, of course. Leave it to the criminal organisation known as the "church" of $cientology to make false claims to the police. What do they care? The organisation never faces consequences.

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These council members are in such a pickle. I wonder how their peers in other non Scientology cities feel about the Saint Hill area council members veering into the pockets of Scientology's PR tactics?

Hubbard's policies to get the local officials to be pro Scientology will never cease.

I'm so happy UK media doesn't buy Scientology in the least.

Xenu enabler council members from Saint Hill, have some self unbrainwashing to do on themselves.

Like the Hubbard book, "Self Analysis" the council members ought to have a pamphlet advising them how to unbrainwash themselves out of being L. Ron Hubbard Xenu exorcism enablers.

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Great horror stories.

Miscavige thinks Scientology are the events.

Hubbard still thought his quackery was the subject.

I wonder which of the 1980s events, of that era, Hubbard saw, and what his comments were on those 1980s events, and if that influenced Miscavige.

The IMPR (I forget what the abbreviation means) but I wonder what LRH said about the events before he died.

I remember the long ago Marketing Aide Flag Bureaux admitting even putting on the late 1970s "Flag Events" at the Fort Harrison, was a guaranteed "Comm Ev."

I dread to remember, but can remember all the Fort Harrison put on Flag events from Dec 1975 til summer 1983, and they were pretty lively and unprofessional, but the plastic glitz professional Hollywood style events are uncomfortable to watch always to me.

The hokey even "best" years of events later on, to me, weren't why I was in Scientology.

It's all quackery to me now, but the events minus the Auditor's Day events, were all NOT the subject, but as a lower downer the events were guaranteed time off, a respite, from the drudgery Sea Orger life. The "cake" from one PAC LRH Birthday even in the early 1980s, still stands out as the best cake ever.

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"International Management Public Relations" for IMPR. Of course, the events of today are all about ego and money.

That was fairly true of Hubbard as well, when he was active publicly. In the mid-60s he went into hiding. A public presence at a widely publicized event would probably have gotten him arrested, so it didn't happen. He did indulge in musical shows at ports and all kinds of low-key showmanship, like riding his motorcycle in a public parade.

The biggest event when Hubbard was alive, and the prototype for the later Miscavige extravaganzas, was the Mission Holder's Conference. People differ on this, but I think Hubbard either ordered it or ordered something similar that was misinterpreted. Or maybe it was an event planned by the mission network itself and Miscavige was ordered in with his heavies to trash it.

At that stage in his life, Hubbard was facing massive IRS bills and subpoenas in three continents. He was obsessed with cash for that reason and was convinced the successful mission network was ripping him off.

So he killed the golden goose, so to speak, and in so doing doomed Scientology to Miscavigology. Since Scientology is horseshit anyway, no great loss for mankind. But massive losses for all those trapped in it.

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Thanks, first IMPR was JeanMicheal Warniez (sp?). When I was busted as the OEC Sup in Clearwater in 1981, JM was one of the sups who replaced me as the FEBC Program really bloomed again under Jon Horwich, Jay Hurwitz as they did their redux of the program.

I went to Int Base in summer of 1983 from Clearwater, so I first hand saw all the events evolving from Christmas 1975 til I quit, in 2003. My favorite were the Annie Broeker event in 1986 held on LA for the Road to Freedom release. The LRH death event was about as much production that I thought "our events" really required. The War if Over event I was in ASI at that time, sat there in the audience a bit too far from the stage but the pyros were nutty. Miscavige was like Hitler, the stage the flag twirling, was so irreligious just nutso cult whacko; but the music with the Peter Schless main theme was the best part of the event. The standing ovations were tiring.

One or two events, Ray Mithoff tried to do some longer range tech history briefings, those were what I thought Scientology was supposed to be about. The "tech" (the quackery, which is the hardest thing to sell in the end of the day, so Hubbard deflected to marketing to somehow succeed selling his quackery) was supposed to be why people even select Scientology as a soul memories alleviation practice.

I read more LRH advices, due to being on the routing forms project, then later in and around INCOMM, then at ASI, so I got to read more than almost anyone, and I tried to put it all together, to make sense of it, like a Course Supervisor who is charged with knowing all that Hubbard wrote, and be helpful answering students' questions as they train.

I saw how several HCOBs/HCOPLs were compiled and knew and had read all the various advices that went into compiling those issues, and I know outside world subject compilation problems, I can see honestly why today the Briefing Course has been pulled.

There is just so much "tech" compiling done that has to be "reviewed" but they simply don't have the qualified persons to do the compiling and come up with any better re-compilations than those done by the "SPs" who quit,

So much time and effort put into events, it overshadows what the Scientology subject is, which is the LRH "tech" and presenting the tech for study and application,

Events are always secondary to the "tech".

Miscavige's era has been to place wrong emphasis, and NOT inform the followers fully of the behind the scenes work, and even gather up the competent work force, if they really even need to do any "improved" "re-compilations" of the final years of LRH's "timeless tech" behind the scenes writings which were turned into the final years of "tech" issues, which I presume is the real hold up to the Briefing Course and Class 8 courses being "pulled" as they are, today.

Miscavige is NOT briefing the followers on the big issues of why things are as they are.

That problem, not informing the public, through the Ron's Journals, as LRH used to do, was a major thing Miscavige is just not up to doing this job he thinks he's doing well.

"From Clear to Eternity" Ron's Journal/LRH ED is to me what Scientology is, in LRH's mind.

That's not Misavige's view of things.

Events are just so far down the list of what Scientology is, that is one of the most major warping during these Miscavige years.

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That's the difference between real science and pseudoscience. Real science grows as others replicate the results of the early pioneers. Mistakes are found and corrected, not simply perpetuated because somebody said so.

Pseudoscience rarely survives the passing of the founders, because the results cannot be tested or replicated. If we call it a religion, there are other options.

Originally Blacks were excluded from the Latter-Day Saints because of the beliefs of the founders. But this religion has a tradition of revelation to the leader of the church, so conveniently this doctrine was reversed. They were also forced to abandon polygamy but got around the violation of clear guidance by the original founders using another faked "divine inspiration".

Scientology could have done something similar, but the divinely uninspired Miscavige could never pull it off. He's just too lacking in imagination. Really it was Ray Mithoff's job, but he screwed up so badly on the original OTVIII that nobody trusted him. And now he is too senile to even try.

So corporate official Scientology is justly doomed. The splinter groups are not really taking off either. Maybe someday we will be able to just turn the page on the whole thing.

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Nice work, Alex!! Love hearing his updates.

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Alex is a tremendous force! I wouldn't want to tangle with him! 💜

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I love what you are doing in the UK. Keep on keeping on!

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