A year ago, we were sent something really unique — a collection of daily dispatches that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote to his shipboard crew as he ran the organization while sailing the Mediterranean and Atlantic during the years 1967 to 1975 (our documents cover a period from late 1968 through 1971).
Since last November, we’ve been posting short excerpts from these fascinating documents, which give us a glimpse of what it was like as Hubbard ran Scientology from the bridge of the yacht Apollo.
Full of maddening jargon and bureacratic minutiae, on occasion an “Orders of the Day” shows us a glimpse of Hubbard’s thinking on diverse subjects. So let’s take one last look at these revealing documents, this time looking at the week of October 28 to November 3.
Florida attorney Ken Dandar filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against the Church of Scientology and its attorneys, asking for injunctive relief and a jury trial over what he says has been a violation of his civil rights.
Dandar’s suit is the latest twist in a dauntingly complex history of litigation that goes back to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Lisa McPherson, a church member who died at Scientology’s Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, in 1995.
In the aftermath of that suit, which was settled in 2004, Dandar found himself in a bizarre legal Catch-22 several years later: a federal judge ordered him to continue representing a client in a lawsuit against the church at the same time that a state judge was telling him he had to quit that case or be sanctioned up to $1,000 a day. Dandar ultimately extricated himself from that mess, but Scientology is now asking the state court for $1 million in court fees, Dandar alleges.
So now he’s gone back to the federal court system to ask for relief: stop the Church of Scientology, he’s asking, which is trying to bury him for doing his job.
Last night, television journalist Nathan Baca returned to Scientology reporting with a two-part report on Scientology’s drug rehab program in Nevada, a Narconon center about 150 miles north of Las Vegas in the small town of Caliente.
Baca is known for a hard-hitting 2009 series he did about Scientology’s International Base as a reporter for a Palm Springs, California station, and he didn’t let what he learned in that experience go to waste as he turned his attention to the church’s controversial and ailing drug rehab operation.
We talked to Baca last night about his special report, and about the church’s reaction when it learned he was back on the case.
This is an extended version of KWTV-Channel 9’s report which aired last night about Scientology’s drug rehab program in Oklahoma — Narconon Arrowhead — which is under investigation for three deaths that occurred there over a nine-month period.
Reporter Dana Hertneky interviews Robert Murphy, whose daughter Stacy Dawn Murphy died at the rehab center in July, and David Love, who worked at a Narconon facility in Quebec and then helped to get it shut down. But she also talked to Narconon Arrowhead CEO Gary Smith, who is suddenly talking to the CBS affiliate and other Oklahoma television stations after refusing to give interviews for months.
Smith is letting in cameras and trying his best to look calm and relaxed. But we can’t help thinking this new strategy has “desperation” written all over it.
Sometimes, we are simply in awe of Scientology’s effectiveness and power as it marches onward, turning this prison planet into the sanest place in the galaxy.
Today, we can barely contain ourselves as we present to you more evidence that David Miscavige is leading Scientology into a golden age.
We present to you this photograph, which appeared recently at a website the church maintains in order to get out the truth that the media tries to suppress. Ladies and gentlemen, gaze upon a church’s good works…
Those tireless researchers over at WhyWeProtest.net reached a milestone last night (and are celebrating with party hats). They scour the Internet looking for evidence of people who have dared to leave the Church of Scientology and speak out publicly about it. (Many more leave quietly, hoping not to draw the wrath of an organization that is notorious for its retaliation ploys.)
Once again, our tipsters have come through, and we have a great new set of Scientology mailers to share with you. On Sunday mornings, we love to show you the fliers and come-ons that were forwarded to us during the week. We seem to be getting more than ever. (Although we haven’t heard from Australia in a while. What’s happening down there?)
Anyway, this week we have a fun selection for you: There’s a new mission in Texas! People in LA have yet another chance to experience the IAS gala! You’ll be happy to know that the Sea Org is still hiring. And best of all — prices are going up!
Still one of our favorite photos: Louis Farrakhan at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood for a gala several years ago, with Scientology’s Alfreddie Johnson and former X-Factor contestant Stacy Francis
For several years now some of us in the press have been bringing up the strange relationship that has grown up between Scientology and the Nation of Islam. Most recently, Eliza Gray did a wonderful job looking at Louis Farrakhan’s embrace of L. Ron Hubbard in The New Republic.
It’s been fascinating to watch Farrakhan explain in videotaped lectures how he’s managed to fall under the spell of the whitest man who ever lived. And it’s true that he’s asked many of his followers to get trained in Dianetics and to get training as auditors. But on this Saturday, we’d like to open up the blog for discussion of a question we have about this strange relationship between such unusual groups.
Friday mornings is when we look back at Scientology history, and we’re now winding down with our last couple of weeks of dispatches from the yacht Apollo.
From 1967 to 1975, L. Ron Hubbard ran Scientology from a small armada of ships that sailed the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Each day, he’d send out a report to his crew which were known as “Orders of the Day.” We have a mostly complete set of them from late 1968 through 1971 that we’ve been sampling, week after week since last November.
So join us as we take a look at what the Commodore was raving about during that time the week of October 21 to 27…
By now you’ve no doubt heard that Tom Cruise has filed a $50 million lawsuit against Bauer Publishing and two of its magazines, Life & Style and In Touch, for claiming on the covers of a couple of issues in July that, following his divorce to Katie Holmes, Cruise had “abandoned” his daughter, Suri.
Cruise, in a complaint filed by his attorney, Bert Fields, accuses the magazines of writing checks on their covers that they couldn’t cash inside — in other words, the stories themselves didn’t have facts proving that Cruise had “abandoned” his daughter. While Tom did have a heavy work schedule following the divorce, Fields insists that the actor at least talked to his daughter on the phone every day.
Well, he may have a point there. But does that mean Cruise is going to get $50 million out of Bauer?
A year ago, we were sent something really unique — a collection of daily dispatches that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote to his shipboard crew as he ran the organization while sailing the Mediterranean and Atlantic during the years 1967 to 1975 (our documents cover a period from late 1968 through 1971). 
