Tom Cruise and Scientology gang-bang
It is a good idea to be suspicious any time the media pack decides to gang up on someone - as they have done with Tom Cruise.
Scientology: John Travolta jumps to the rescue of Tom Cruise
About time someone says something sensible about this hysteric German-based debate about whether it is ok for someone being a member of a certain religion or not. What’s next? Government approval to join such a group? Looking more into the German past this idea is not that far away!
Tom Cruise and the Scientology video - what a lot of noise
What Tom Cruise - or rather Scientology - is experience is religious discrimination born in the mind of some old-time Nazis. Certainly he is being attacked for creating a movie about the German resistance in World War II! That’s why such a movie is important and that’s why his non-Scientologist partner Paula Wagner needs to be congratulated for her honest and straight answer to the current hate mongering:
Wagner, who works alongside Cruise as the co-owner and CEO of their
company United Artists Entertainment, released the following statement
of support on Friday (January 18):
“I have known and worked
with Tom for more than 25 years. He’s a rock-solid dependable partner,
and I have the utmost respect and admiration for his talent, integrity,
kindness, and dedication. Andrew Morton’s book is a disgraceful piece
of gossip-mongering, filled with distortions and outright lies that no
sensible person will take seriously. I am not a Scientologist, nor are
most of the people Tom and I work with, but that doesn’t mean I can sit
by silently while he is attacked for his religious beliefs. As a
filmmaker and an American, I feel strongly that an individual’s
religion should have no bearing on their professional life. I have
always believed that Americans celebrated these differences, and to see
the vitriol that has been directed towards my friend is truly
discouraging. It’s easy to mock an out-of-context video, but that
doesn’t change the fact that Tom Cruise is one of the hardest-working
and nicest human beings I have ever known.”
‘De-sci-phering’ Tom Cruise video
Here is a great article with more information!
“For me, it’s all about KSW.” So says actor and celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise on a video allegedly circulated by a disgruntled former member of the church. What does that acronym mean? And why are people so suspicious about the Church of Scientology?
The video, which was aired in part on Wednesday morning shows, allegedly is used to promote the Church of Scientology belief system to newcomers and features Cruise speaking about his commitment to its tenets. Cruise joined the church in the 1980s, according to Andrew Morton’s new unauthorized biography of the star, and has emerged as a spokesman for Scientology in recent years.
KSW stands for Keeping Scientology Working, a policy letter written in 1965 by L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology’s founder. In the letter, Hubbard, a science fiction writer, outlined 10 steps to ensure survival of the movement. He commends members for carrying out the first part of the mission, but urges them to take it further and eradicate what he called “incorrect technology.”
“This point will, of course, be attacked as ‘unpopular,’ ‘egotistical’ and ‘undemocratic,’” Hubbard wrote in the letter. “It very well may be. But it is also a survival point. And I don’t see that popular measures, self-abnegation and democracy have done anything for Man but push him further into the mud.”
Messages left with the Church of Scientology International seeking clarification of the letter’s meaning have not yet been returned. But scholars of new religious movements (NRMs in academic parlance) say the letter posted on the Internet is authentic. They say the letter and terminology encourage members to take an aggressive approach against people who oppose tenets of the belief system.
Cruise said his life and mission was made clear when he re-read the letter.
“We are the authorities on getting people off drugs. We are the authorities on the mind. We are the authorities on improving conditions,” Cruise said. “Once you know these tools and you know that they work it’s not good enough to say I’m just doing OK. … Being a Scientologist people are turning to you, so you better know it and if you don’t go and learn it.”
This might help explain why Cruise in 2005 publicly criticized fellow actress Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants for post-partum depression. It also might help explain why the church has earned a reputation for being so litigious when it encounters what it calls a PTS, a “potential trouble source,” or SP, “suppressive person.”
Scientology teaches that a life force called Theta exists within all of us. Through the church’s practices, adherents believe one can realize his or her true nature as an immortal spirit, or thetan. Their path to enlightenment is a step-by-step process of achieving greater awareness. The ultimate goal is to become an Operating Thetan.
“Scientology is kind of an amalgam of eastern Hindu mysticism, science fiction and self- help,” said Mathew Schmalz, an associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross. He compares the way the general public treats Scientology to the way Americans treated Catholics more than a century ago, and adds that Scientology is not a countercultural movement. “If you look at it in terms of other religious traditions it’s not really that strange,” he said. “What’s strange is it’s presented in a science fiction idiom.”
But there are plenty of sci-fi aspects to a number of religious traditions. So why does Tom Cruise make us so uncomfortable? Schmalz suggests that Scientologists’ frequent reluctance to answer specific questions about their faith doesn’t go over well with Americans. He suggests another reason too.
“It accepts traditional American ideas of success, which is one reason why it recruits celebrities so assiduously,” he said. “You could look at Scientology as a parody of American values and success. Reflected back on American society there are certain things we might be uncomfortable with.”
Watch the video. Does Tom Cruise make you feel uncomfortable? If he were evangelizing for a different faith, would you feel the same?
Definition: PTS/SP
Tom Cruise is in the media all over the place. That’s not new, but what’s new is that he is quoted using Scientology terminology. So here is some collected data directly from the source:
(Source: Scientology Handbook (online) )
Often a social personality is so mired down in his own difficulties that he cannot see improvement is possible. To him, his setbacks and travails are “just life” or “the way things have to be.” He has no inkling that such a thing as antisocial personalities exist or that one (or more) were making life miserable for him.
To become aware that such a condition exists requires one understand what the condition is. Following are basic terms and definitions associated with the detection and handling of antisocial personalities and those affected by them. These need to be understood for success in addressing and handling personal suppression.
Suppressive Person: (abbreviated “SP”). A person who seeks to suppress, or squash, any betterment activity or group. A suppressive person suppresses other people in his vicinity. This is the person whose behavior is calculated to be disastrous. “Suppressive person” or a “suppressive” is another name for the “antisocial personality.”
Potential Trouble Source: (abbreviated “PTS”). A person who is in some way connected to and being adversely affected by a suppressive person. He is called a potential trouble source because he can be a lot of trouble to himself and to others.
An indicator of someone being a potential trouble source is not whether that person looks intimidated or not cheerful or is having trouble with his boss. Those are not things that indicate whether someone is a PTS. The indicators are very precise.
The PTS is connected to an SP who is antagonistic to him. The suppressive person keeps the potential trouble source from functioning in life. Therefore, the potential trouble source can do well in life or in some activity and then, when he meets up with or is affected by the suppressive person-who is somehow invalidating or making less of him or his efforts-he gets worse.
A potential trouble source is doing well and then not doing well, doing well, not doing well. When he is not doing well, he is sometimes ill. …
Definition: KSW - Keeping Scientology Working
This is the title of a series of Scientology texts by L. Ron Hubbard to make sure that Scientology is not being abused. He says in No 1 of the series:
“We have some time since passed the point of achieving uniformly workable technology.
The only thing now is getting the technology applied.
If you can’t get the technology applied then you can’t deliver what’s promised. It’s as simple as that. If you can get the technology applied, you can deliver what’s promised.
The only thing you can be upbraided for by students or pcs is “no results”. Trouble spots occur only where there are “no results”. Attacks from governments or monopolies occur only where there are “no results” or “bad results”.
Therefore the road before Scientology is clear and its ultimate success is assured if the technology is applied.”
Definition: out-ethics / putting in ethics
First, how is “ethics” defined in Scientology? Here is the primary text about it:
“Ethics is so native to the individual that when it goes off the rails he will always seek to overcome his own lack of ethics.
He knows he has an ethics blind spot the moment he develops it. At that moment he starts trying to put ethics in on himself, and to the degree that he can envision long-term survival concepts, he may be successful, even though lacking the actual tech of ethics.
All too often, however, an individual becomes involved in an out-ethics situation; and if the individual has no tech with which to handle it analytically (rationally), his “handling” is to believe or pretend that something was done to him that prompted or justified his out-ethics action, and at that point he starts downhill. When that happens, nobody puts him down the chute harder, really, than he does himself.
And, once on the way down, without the basic technology of ethics, he has no way of climbing back up the chute – he just collapses, directly and deliberately. And even though he has a lot of complexities in his life, and he has other people doing him in, it all starts with his lack of knowledge of the technology of ethics.
This, basically, is one of the primary tools he uses to dig himself out.”
(Source: Scientology Handbook(online) )
For those who did not get it up to here: out-ethics is just a violation of any ethics code somebody abide. Here is a bit more detail on scientologyethics.org:
“Scientology ethics, explained L. Ron Hubbard, are reason. They provide the means by which men conduct themselves toward their long-term survival, the survival of their families, their groups, their planet and more. Implicit within the subject is the recognition that all things are, to one degree or another, interdependent upon all else and that only by constantly considering the survival of the many can the individual ensure his own survival.
With this thinking firmly in mind the Scientologist obeys the law, remains faithful to his spouse, truthful in his business dealings and otherwise conducts himself in accordance with honesty, integrity and decency.
Scientologists understand that rules and laws form the agreements by which a group, society or nation survives, and that high ethical standards, far from inhibiting the enjoyment of life, foster it.
Yet what of the rest of the world?
For want of a workable system of ethics and justice, whole civilizations have gone to ruin, whole forests have been laid to waste and whole sections of our cities have been reduced to racial battlegrounds. Simultaneously, we have witnessed the steady disintegration of the family, a general decay of sexual values, escalating drug abuse, theft, assault and on and on until it seems there is no hope at all – except this: The Scientologist must also live in this society, and he truly does possess the tools to make a difference.”
Whats this about Tom Cruise?
There has been quite some noise about Tom Cruise and Scientology and a book about it. As far I can see this book is one of those trying to make money by repeating the most startling (lies) stories about international stars. That’s at least what I can read out of The Star of today:
Morton’s Tom Cruise tell-all says nothing
Author does rehash of ancient tabloid stories and offers no proof for more lurid allegations (January 10, 200 
Malene Arpe
Pop Culture Writer
The most damning thing one learns from reading Andrew Morton’s Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography is that the actor being biographed is a control freak. Also, perhaps, a bit of a self-obsessed bore.
The book, which will be in stores Tuesday, is a sore disappointment for those of us who’d hoped we might learn something new and exciting about the not-so-tall movie star.
It is, however, not surprising that no great secrets are revealed when the author relies on sources such as Kathleen Jensen, a Toledo, Ohio, “family friend” of Cruise’s wife, Katie Holmes. Jensen shows her moral outrage over the out-of-wedlock pregnancy that would eventually bring forth Suri Cruise and rails that, “She (Holmes) really needs to get that baby baptized in a Catholic church.”
Jensen and a parade of old acquaintances, many of whom may or may not once have eaten a sandwich next to Cruise when they were in the second grade, are about as good as the sources get. Old, tired tabloid stories are repeated, and couch-jumping Oprah Winfrey Show incidents are retold and scrutinized.
Which leads to what seems to be foremost on Morton’s mind: the Church of Scientology of which Cruise is a prominent member. A good portion of the book is devoted to ragging on Scientology (unfailingly referred to as “sect” or “cult”), but rather than make a case that the church has somehow made Cruise a total weirdo, it comes across as space-filler/half-baked personal vendetta.
It’s possible that Scientology is evil, but Morton’s book is not called Scientology is Evil. While a person’s religious affiliation is of interest, here the delving into it comes across as a substitute for actually talking to people who have met Cruise during the last 20 years.
Earlier this week, a Daily Mail article examined Morton’s implication that Suri is somehow the product of frozen sperm from church founder L. Ron Hubbard (shudder). What the suggestion hinges on is a passage as silly as if Morton had been pondering the possibility that Suri’s dad was a dolphin.
“Some sect members sincerely believed that Katie Holmes was carrying the baby that would be the vessel for L. Ron Hubbard’s spirit when he returned from his trip around the galaxy…. Some Sea Org fanatics even wondered if the actress had been impregnated with Hubbard’s frozen sperm. In her more reflective moments, Katie might have felt as if she were in the middle of a real-life version of the horror movie Rosemary’s Baby …”
Anyone who’s visited a celebrity blog during the past couple of years has come across this theory. It’s possible it’s true – it’s also possible that kittens could take over the world and enslave us all – but Morton doesn’t offer any kind of proof.
Morton does, however, excel at iffy foreshadowing. When Cruise first saw himself on television “… he was literally jumping up and down on the sofa with excitement…. It was a precursor of a rather more public performance some twenty-five years later.” Or maybe it was just a kid excited over seeing himself on television.
There have been rumblings about legal action against Morton from Cruise’s team, but unless they want to sue him for being boring, they should just leave it alone.
Curiously, one of the persistent rumours about Cruise – that he may have an, erm, affinity for other men – is shot down again and again by a long parade of old girlfriends dating back to his high school years, who claim that he was a tiger in the backseats of various cars.
The German home of David Miscavige, leader of Scientology
David Miscavige ist der Vorsitzende des Vorstands Religious Technology Center (RTC), das im Jahre 1982 als gemeinn
ützige Organisation mit dem Zweck gegründet wurde, die Scientology Religion zu erhalten und zu beschützen.
