We want to thank Professor David Touretzky of Carnegie Mellon University, who sent us down this rabbit hole a few days ago.
He pointed us to a news item that has grabbed considerable attention in the academic world, although Gawker thinks it can’t be any more boring.
Here’s the thumbnail: An academic librarian at McMaster University in Ontario named David Askey is being sued for millions because in 2010, when he was still a tenured associate professor at Kansas State University, he wrote a blog post criticizing the quality of books put out by an academic publisher, Edwin Mellen Press.
Who cares, Gawker asks. Well, we think you might care after you hear more about Edwin Mellen Press, about the odd way Scientology is involved, and about a guy named Herbert Richardson.
A year ago, we made public hundreds of schematics showing plans for Scientology’s “Flag Mecca,” known colloquially as the “Super Power” building. The city-block-sized, 300,000-square-foot monstrosity across the street from the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida first broke ground in 1998, and even after the church was forced to pay $413,500 in penalties to the City of Clearwater in 2011 because of delays in its construction, there’s still no indication when it will open.
One of our tipsters noticed that this video featuring the Super Power building was posted Saturday on the church’s official YouTube channel. Hidden near the end of the segment — about 50 seconds from the finish — there’s news of yet another major project to be built next door to the Super Power building, one that looks like it could take several more years and millions more in construction
All hail “L. Ron Hubbard Hall,” David Miscavige’s newest excuse to delay opening his major fundraising boondoggle!
Last week, we learned that Tom Cruise is playing hardball in his $50 million defamation lawsuit against Bauer Media, publishers of In Touch and Life & Style. Cruise sued after the magazines said he’d “abandoned” his daughter Suri following his split with Katie Holmes last summer. Cruise has indicated that he’ll use depositions and document discovery to portray Bauer as a publisher of porn and magazines that appeal to neo-Nazis.
But if Cruise goes forward, he’ll be subject to his own deposition by Bauer, and that gave us an idea. What sort of questions might the actor be asked, and how might he answer — if he were being completely truthful, that is? An actual deposition could take months to happen, but we’ve asked some people who know a lot about his involvement in Scientology to help us come up with this simulated interrogation. We only hope the real thing turns out to be half as fun!
On Sundays, we love to bring you all the best that Scientology has to offer. The fliers and mailers and announcements about its good works around the globe.
It’s become a highlight of the week here at the Bunker, and we hope you enjoy this week’s offerings, which are brought to us by our tipsters near and far.
This week, we ponder the theta environment at Saint Hill Manor, cogitate over the miracles of the Bridge to Total Freedom, and of course get a vital update from the Library Campaign.
Also, we get some inspiration from a motivational speaker who is in a league of his own. We think you’ll agree with us on that one.
In 1990, author Jon Atack published what is still one of the very best books on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, A Piece of Blue Sky. Atack now has a new edition of the book out, and it reminded us what an encyclopedic resource he is. So we had an idea. In the world of Scientology watching, we noticed that there seem to be some legends, myths, and contested facts that tend to get hashed and rehashed in books, articles, and especially on the Internet. With Atack’s help, we’re going to tackle these issues one by one, drawing on Jon’s deep knowledge and sharp sense of humor.
This week, we have a great treat: Harlan Ellison is IN THE HOUSE. Yes, the legendary writer helped us out with our mythbusting this week, and that has thrown our entire program into disarray.
We’ll try to calm down and start at the beginning. What we wanted to discuss with Jon Atack this week was one of the most enduring parts of L. Ron Hubbard lore: Before he published Dianetics in 1950, did Hubbard really tell other people that he intended to make millions by starting a religion?
Welcome to our ongoing project, where we blog a 1950 first edition of Scientology’s bible, Dianetics, with the help of ex-Scientologist, Bay Area lawyer, blogger, and author Vance Woodward. Go here for the first post in the series.
In the last chapter, Hubbard made his big reveal, explaining that he had done what mankind had been unable to do for thousands of years — discover the nature of the reactive mind, which records our most awful moments during unconsciousness, and which plays back those moments at inopportune times. It’s the reactive mind that holds us back from being supermen.
As we pointed out, Hubbard had been setting readers up for this revelation for many pages, and then had announced his discovery with as much operatic force as he could muster.
That was all well and good, but he must have realized that he’s now made himself vulnerable. For any carnival barker, the build-up is 90 percent of the game, and once you reveal what it is you’ve been selling, you then have to worry about a backlash when your Feejee Mermaid, for example, turns out to be held together with papier-mâché.
Hubbard knows this, so in this next chapter, he does some fancy backpedaling.
Our thanks to Phil Plait, who alerted us to this on Twitter. Several amazing videos are coming in from the Ural Mountains region of Russia, where a meteor provided an incredible show about an hour ago (midnight Eastern time), near the city of Chelyabinsk.
Plait (of Bad Astronomer fame) guesses that this object is unrelated to 2012DA14, a 50-meter asteroid that is passing very close to the Earth in several more hours.
So far, the only reporting on this we’ve seen is a Reuters report mistakenly labeling this a “meteor shower.” This is clearly not a shower but a single object, a meteor, which looks like it broke up, producing parallel trails as it burned up in a spectacular daytime fireball.
Ever since Debbie Cook rocked Scientology with her infamous New Year’s Eve e-mail last year, Scientology leader David Miscavige has been on a major campaign to disprove one of her complaints — that he’s not spending money to burnish the church’s image.
Cook, a longtime, somewhat legendary employee of Scientology’s “Sea Org,” shocked her fellow church members with her e-mail, which accused Miscavige of, among other things, amassing a billion-dollar slush fund through donations to the International Association of Scientologists. And while every church member was under intense pressure to donate to the IAS’s coffers, they were seeing nothing to show for it. When was the last time, she asked, that a Scientologist ever saw a church ad on television?
Well, Miscavige appeared to take that part of her screed to heart. Since the spring of last year, the church has been on a major network television advertising binge, showing up most recently during the Super Bowl and the Grammys. And we’ve noticed other efforts that are aimed at countering all the bad press the church has been subject to.
We’re bursting with pride here in the Underground Bunker for Dee Findlay, a reader who first made contact with us about a year ago.
At that point, she had just decided to come out of Scientology, and had discovered the Voice blog almost right away. She became a frequent reader and commenter, and also communicated with us behind the scenes. We couldn’t say it then, but she’s been a great inspiration for us.
That was especially true last July, when Karen de la Carriere stood up to the church that didn’t want her to see her own dead son, and several of our readers banded together with her in solidarity and dared to reveal their real identities in the comments section of our blog. One of them was Dee.
Dee has become one of our most active commenters — under the name DeElizabethan — and now, she’s shared with us her latest accomplishment: she’s been declared a Suppressive Person by the Church of Scientology!
Oops! We plum forgot that we’d scheduled this video for this morning. Things have been a bit crazy around the Bunker lately, and we did imbibe a bit last night, joining in to “wet the head” of our newest reader, Grayson Headley. (And so did Jonny Jacobsen — check out the photos we added this morning!)
Anyway, we have to say the Birmingham Org really seems to have stepped up its game judging by this Star Wars cavalcade it put on recently in order to separate local Scientologists from their money.
After the jump, we’ll remind you of what a Birmingham fundraiser looked like back in 2011!
