With the Ideal Org program stalled (Nancy Cartwright just can’t seem to raise enough dough to put the Valley project over the hump) and Scientology leader David Miscavige’s other big surprises all worn out, this New Year’s Eve announcement was one of Scientology’s most underwhelming ever.
You see, Miscavige is really stuck in a bad situation now. It’s been nearly 29 years since the old man dropped his body, so no new “technology” is coming from L. Ron Hubbard, wherever he is. Meanwhile, there’s massive disillusionment among the rank and file, who are sick of being hit up for donations and told about “massive expansion” when in reality the church is dwindling fast.
But Miscavige keeps going back to the old playbook: Announce a new initiative, whether it’s needed or not, and put on a full-court press for donations as if the funding was the difference between prison world and a cleared planet.
And now he’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Scientology purchased the historic KCET studios in Los Angeles (see above) several years ago, but only now is it going through renovations. The church has been saying for a couple of years that the studios will finally allow them to put out media about Scientology in a big way.
But that’s a blatant lie. Scientology already owns a massive audiovisual complex — Gold Base — at its international headquarters compound, a sprawling 500-acre campus about 90 miles east of Los Angeles. It also owns Mad Hatter Studio, Chick Corea’s old recording house, and for many years Scientology has had all of the sound stages and Avid editing bays it needs to produce anything it might want to.
But here’s what it plans to do with the KCET studios. Take a look at the renderings, and then we’ll tell you what former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder had to say about the church’s plans for its new international media center.
We asked Rinder, does he think, as Miscavige boasted at the New Year’s Eve celebration, that Scientology will get its own channel on major cable services?
“You can buy anything, Tony. If the Moonies can buy the Washington Times, Scientology can buy a cable channel. But buying it and having anyone look at it are two different things,” Rinder told us. “They have a massive website with a million videos and no one’s looking at that. What’s the difference?”
Rinder says that like his other projects, Miscavige is just looking for the effect it has on the wealthy people bankrolling Scientology. “It’s all to create the impression that there is some massive expansion happening. And because there are no more Ideal Orgs happening, and they’ve done the Ideal Narconon plans, they need something like this to keep up the illusion.”
And like the Ideal Orgs, the KCET renovation is another project that’s completely unneeded.
“It’s insane for them to be creating more studio space. They have so much space to create CDs and DVDs as it is. They have eight full Avid editing bays at Gold. They have two huge sound stages. And there’s also Mad Hatter. There’s no need for even more. It’s a boondoggle. It’s just a way to create more enthusiasm for donations,” he says.
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Donations? Fuck yeah!
As we told you recently, Google stopped serving our ad which we were using to keep the lights on here at the Underground Bunker. We made dozens of appeals, trying to figure out what Google objected to, and we were only told that it had to do with “adult content.” Since we never post adult content in our stories, we could only conclude that it had something to do with the language we use in posts and that gets used in our comments.
In order to appease Google, we asked commenters to tone down their use of curse words and we put in a filter in our Disqus commenting system. We know that cramped your style, and we appreciate your putting up with our experiment.
And now we say, fuck Google! We’ve taken off the language filter, and we’ve put back our Paypal donate button, something we haven’t had for more than a year. This time, however, we’ve added the option of donating a small amount in monthly installments — some of you had asked us about scheduled payments, and we think they might be a good idea. (It’s also still possible to make a one-time donation to bunkerfund@tonyortega.org)
As in the past, webmaster and attorney Scott Pilutik will be handling all donations, and for journalistic reasons we won’t know (and don’t want to know) who’s giving money. We’re dedicated to the hard news reporting on Scientology here, and we don’t want to compromise that. Also, as always, it will cost nothing to read our stories here at the Bunker. Donate or not, we want you to keep coming back for more of our great community. Fucking A!
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23 days until Alex Gibney’s film Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief opens at the Sundance Film Festival at 2:30 pm on Sunday, January 25 in Park City, Utah
10 days until our special Underground Bunker announcement at noon on January 12
Posted by Tony Ortega on January 2, 2015 at 16:30
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BLOGGING DIANETICS (We read Scientology’s founding text) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
UP THE BRIDGE (Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48
GETTING OUR ETHICS IN (Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING (Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49
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