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?
One of our eagle-eyed commenters pointed out something yesterday: Tommy Davis has suddenly vanished from Scientology’s media relations web page.
Sure enough, it’s true. The church’s website which lists its official spokespersons is now bereft of Davis and his wife, Jessica Feshbach. The two people who were behind them, Karin Pouw and Bob Adams, have been moved to the top tier. Pouw is now listed as the “international spokesperson.”
After the jump, we’ll show you the before and after images of the church’s official page, and we’ll try to come to grips with this stunning news.
We have to hand it to reporter Amy Jones of The Sun — she really punked Scientology leader David Miscavige and his obsession with security.
Late Monday night, the British newspaper published Jones’s account of walking into Scientology’s big annual gala which takes place in the UK each October to celebrate the International Association of Scientologists. The big IAS party is one of half a dozen major events put on by the church at different places around the world, and they all feature Miscavige on stage, feeding thousands of followers a lot of hard-to-believe assertions about Scientology’s expansion around the globe.
We’ve reported on leaked videos of past IAS and other events. But for her story, Jones managed to get inside and watch this IAS party while it was going on, and was never challenged by Scientology’s legendarily tight security.
Friday afternoon, we heard from the local Anonymous folks that the theatrical debut of a documentary featuring several of them was showing in town.
We attended, and had a great time watching We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists. Director Brian Knappenberger was on hand to answer questions afterwards, as were some of the New York Anons featured in it: Vendetta, SethDood, and PokeAnon, who we have frequently seen at protests on 46th Street across from the Scientology org.
Poke announced that night that there would be a “raid” on Scientology the following night, Saturday. But we had other plans and couldn’t go. Someone who did appreciate Saturday’s demonstration turned out to be comedian Lewis Black, who announced on his Facebook that it was the “Best. Protest. Ever.”
One of our tipsters briefly considered joining Scientology’s Sea Organization — the hardcore group of workers who toil for almost no pay and often do menial labor from dawn to midnight, day after day.
This person had second thoughts and didn’t join, but they still had a copy of the Sea Org’s application form and thought we might like to see it.
Boy howdy, were we glad they sent it over.
Get out your pens and pencils, kids, because it’s time to answer some pretty strange questions before you join David Miscavige’s planetary clearing crew for the next billion years…
Our tipsters have really come through for us this week with some fascinating new Scientology mailers. Has there ever been a better time to be a Scientologist? Just look at all the different ways you can donate money!
We’ll start with this weekend’s big event — the International Association of Scientologists (IAS) spectacular that took place in the UK. Each October, several thousand of the faithful gather to listen as, for three hours, Scientology leader David Miscavige takes the stage and goes on and on and on about all of Scientology’s good works and how this prison planet will soon become one big Narconon drug rehab clinic. Or something.
We can only hope someone will leak us video of the event soon. And that Chill EB was allowed to perform one of his amazing rap songs.
We talked this week with yet another longtime Scientologist who is quitting the church, 35-year member Steve Poore.
On September 30, Poore became the latest veteran church member to declare his defection at the website of former high-ranking Scientology executive Marty Rathbun. Since 2009, Rathbun’s blog has become the place where more and more Scientologists are publicly declaring that they’re fed up with church leader David Miscavige and are going “independent” — still adhering to the philosophies of L. Ron Hubbard, but ditching the official, corporate church.
On Friday mornings we leave our bodies and travel back in time to stand on the bridge of the Apollo with L. Ron Hubbard, circa 1968-1971, to watch the Commodore run Scientology as he sailed the Mediterranean and Atlantic.
We have an excellent set of excerpts from Hubbard’s shipboard dispatches this week, but we ran into a bit of a snag when we went looking for our other Friday morning feature, “OT Phenomena” — stories of superhuman Scientology abilities from old copies of Advance! magazine.
It turns out, editor Jefferson Hawkins left out the very popular OT Phenomena in some of the issues we’re looking through now, in 1978. But then, in Issue 55, from November/December, we spotted something monumental that we can’t wait to share with you.
It was then that L. Ron Hubbard changed life as we know it forever.
Brian Culkin sent over an interesting message this morning. Culkin, a yoga master and business consultant, was featured last year in the landmark Tampa Bay Times investigative series about Scientology’s cash-hungry methods, “The Money Machine.”
Although Culkin was only in Scientology for about a year, he provided some stunning testimony about how often he was hit up for cash once the church realized that he had a bit of money. In just a year with the church, he estimated that he turned over about $330,000.
But he’s been out since February 2010, and now he’s asking a cheeky question. If Scientology’s members who have reached Operating Thetan Level Eight really have “cause over matter,” shouldn’t they be able to replicate the yoga routine you see in this video?
According to a slick television ad that played earlier this year, Scientology is adding 4.4 million new members around the world every single year. At that rate, Scientology is adding more members than all the Jews in the world in just a little more than every three years!
Some of us have expressed some skepticism about those numbers. But now, even David Miscavige himself has gone and punched a big hole in his public relations efforts.
Recently, the Scientology leader’s attorneys filed a court document which asserts, quite vociferously and repeatedly, that…
“Mr. Miscavige conducts no business in the State of Texas, has no property (real or personal) in this state, maintains no employees, servants, or agents in Texas, has never filed a lawsuit in this state, does not maintain any bank accounts in this state, and is not registered to conduct business in this state.”
Well, so much for church recruitment in the second largest state in the union. But then, recent events had already convinced us that Texas is, for Scientology, a rocky place where it can find no purchase. Let us count the ways…
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.
