As Scientology’s big November 8 annual IAS gala nears, curiosity about the church’s tent party rises.
We’ve been reporting about unusual things happening lately in Clearwater, Florida, the spiritual headquarters of the worldwide organization. Normally, the October gala of the International Association of Scientologists is held under a big tent in East Grinstead, England. But this year, with no explanation why, Scientology leader David Miscavige decided to move the event to Florida, and had the tent shipped to Clearwater.
Some of our readers have kept us current on the state of the tent with photos like those at right, and we were even given a peek inside the empty tent when it first went up. But that was before work had begun on the elaborate staging. And now, we have some pretty remarkable looks inside at what’s going on.
UPDATE: We had some miscommunication with our source on the following images, and we need to clarify what we’ve posted here.
Our source has given us three schematics for this year’s complex stage and backdrop for the IAS gala on November 8. We printed one earlier, and in this post we have two additional drawings, which appear below. In all three of them, there’s a very complex setup involving aluminum flags surrounding a globe. This is a very complicated structure, so when the church provided builders with the schematics, it also supplied two photographs of the 2011 stage being put together as an aid in how these structures are pieced together.
The following two photographs, in other words, show the construction of the 2011 stage in East Grinstead, England, which you can clearly see in this video.
Again, to be clear, these two photos were included with the schematics to help the builders only. This year’s elaborate staging is reflected in the architectural drawings below. We apologize for the confusion.
Here’s a schematic of the full backdrop, and now we can see the “aluminum flags” from the last blueprint we revealed..
Here’s another angle on it, looking down from overhead. Whatever the final setup looks like, we’re sure it will be fabulous!
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SUPREME COURT UPDATE: NO DECISION IN FIRST ROUND
Here’s a quick update as we keep an eye on the US Supreme Court this week — we have received the first round of decisions produced by this week’s conference. The court put out a list of 13 cases that it had decided, and the Laura DeCrescenzo v. Scientology case was not among them. We called and spoke with someone at the court, who told us to check back Monday morning, and to keep an eye on the case docket in the meantime, which we will do. But for now, no news either way on the case.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on October 1, 2013 at 07:00
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