Suri's Extended Vocabulary

From popeater.com :

It's clear that Suri Cruise is blessed with unnaturally good looks - but apparently, she's super-intelligent, too. Her proud daddy Tom Cruise had plenty to say about his clever toddler at the 'Valkyrie' premiere on Monday night.

"Her vocabulary is incredible," Cruise told PEOPLE. However complicated two-and-a-half year old Suri's speech may be, he and Katie favor the classics: "I love hearing 'I love you, dada,' or, 'I love you, mama.'"

From people.com :

Watch out, Harvard. She's not even three years old, but little Suri Cruise is a bona fide brainiac, boasts her proud papa.
"Her vocabulary is incredible," Tom Cruise told PEOPLE Monday night at the New York premiere of Valkyrie.

Anonymous Picks the Wrong Building

Several news article about Anonymous' goof during the Valkyrie premiere.

From actressarchives.com:

Report: Tom Cruise Outwits Anti-Scientologists

According to a report by MSNBC, the anti-Scientology group Anonymous did little to help their cause the other day, as they pulled off one of the lamest protests ever at the premiere of Tom Cruise’s new film “Valkyrie.” Looks like the tides are turning in Cruise’s favor. First he pulled off an interview on “The Today Show” and managed to seem--dare we say it--normal, and now, due to a group of inept protestors, the oft-ridiculed “religion” that is Scientology successfully dodged an attack. First Britney, now Tom. 2008 truly will be remembered as the year of the comeback.

Hours before the premiere, the group realized they’d obtained a permit to protest at the wrong place, as they discovered the premiere was taking place at Jazz at Lincoln Center, which is located in the Time Warner Center, not in Lincoln Center. Whoops. Sure seems like someone should have double-checked that...

In the end, Anonymous got their protest, but the new locale really wasn’t conducive to a good ol’ truly disruptive protest. In fact, the premiere organizers chose Jazz at Lincoln Center for that very reason. Explained a source, “Anonymous picketed outside (Cruise's wife) Katie's ‘All My Sons’ premiere and ruined photos by being in the background. They didn’t want the same thing. Tom loves being with his fans, signing autographs.

From msnbc.msn.com:

Anti-Scientology group Anonymous hoped to protest the Dec. 15 New York City premiere of “Valkyrie,” starring noted Scientologist Tom Cruise, but wasn’t so successful.

For starters, just hours before the premiere, group organizers realized that the event’s location was at Jazz at Lincoln Center, which is actually located at the Time Warner Center and not in Lincoln Center itself as they’d thought.

The difference of a few blocks meant a difference in police precinct jurisdictions, which in turn meant that they had to scramble to get a permit from the police to allow their protest (in the end, they did get their permit).

One source close to the premiere planning says that the choice to hold it at Jazz at Lincoln Center was made in part because it would be more difficult to protest — the location doesn’t allow for a big outdoor red carpet.

The net result: Anonymous, along with a German camera crew that followed the group to the protest and plans to air their footage in a documentary in early 2009, gathered at the premiere “but Tom never came out to talk to us,” according to one protester.

From radaronline.com:

FAIL Protesters from Anonymous; wrong place, right time.

Cruise on Letterman

From marketwatch.com:

Tom Cruise will appear as a guest on "The Late Show with David Letterman"

Tune in Tuesday, December 16 on CBS to watch Tom Cruise and David Letterman on "The Late Show with David Letterman."

PS - From this article I also read:

However, when Lauer was the guest of honor at the Friars Club annual celebrity Roast in New York City in October, Cruise arrived and joked with Lauer about the incident.

I thought it was the other way around, that it was Cruise who was fried about, but then am just a modest Belgian and don't personally follow any of these American shows.

It Will Take Time to Restore Chaos

The shoe-throwing attack on US President George W. Shoe has been immortalized in an online video game by T-Enterprise: Bush's Boot Camp.

Bush loses "health points" every time he is hit with a shoe, and the game ends when his health meter reaches zero.

In September, T-Enterprise also pitted Alaskan polar bears against US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, in a game that criticized the Alaskan governor's environmental record.


Related blog entries - R-Bushoe-

Taron Lexton and Marisol Nichols

Taron Lexton (international videographer, youngest graduate of LA Film School, 9-times award winner), and Marisol Nichols, one of the most sought after actresses in Hollywood, must be Scientologists.

They got married at a Scientology Center and, last week, introduced 11-week-old daughter Rain India to the world while out at a Church of Scientology event.

Cruise Shares Headline with George W. Shoe

Tom Cruise re-did the Today show with Matt Lauer without being arrogant, a feat that makes him appears on the same headline as George W. Shoe on associatedcontent.com.

Tom Cruise admitted that the 2005 rant about Scientology on TODAY show interview with Matt Lauer came off as arrogant.

"I learned a lesson," Tom Cruise told Matt Lauer. "I think I learned a really good lesson."

From watching the show Tom did seem very sincere in his apology he gave Matt Lauer.

Tom Cruise told PEOPLE magazine "I'm not a person who sits in judgment of people. That's just not who I am." It's nice to see Tom Cruise has learned a lesson. Tom is just like everyone else in a way. He got caught up in the moment and opened his mouth a little too much.

In 2004, the encounter with Matt Lauer in which Cruise angrily sounded off about the "pseudoscience" of psychiatry prompted 10,000 viewer emails to the network. The Telegraph reports him saying of the original interview:

"I went back and looked at it and it was interesting... you know, it's not what I had intended. Looking at myself, I thought, 'Man, that came across as arrogant.' It was one of those things where you go, 'Ok, I could have absolutely handled that better.' I didn't communicated it the way that I wanted to communicate it. That's not who I am, that's not the person I am, coming across that way."

Then more confirmation about the fact that the Valkyrie script was chosen on its intrinsic value alone, independently on how it may be received by the public.

"I read the script and I couldn't stop turning the pages. I used to play in the backyard with my friends Kill The Nazis and Kill The Germans, and suddenly to see there was this resistance and these people that had very high integrity and risked their own lives, and how early they resisted - that was fascinating to me. The film is a real edge-of-your-seat suspense thriller, but these events actually occurred."

eonline.com reports Tom's new take on Scientology:

The host later asked the actor about his decision not to talk about Scientology. Cruise said it's not that he won't talk about it, but "there's a time and place for it."

We already knew there were no more tension between Matt and Tom after Tom's appearance in the Friars Roast, but here we learn that there apparently wasn't any either immediately following the show:

Tension between Lauer and the Top Gunner was nonexistent. In fact, the morning-show king claimed "there was no animosity there" immediately following the fateful interview.

Lastly, we learn that Tom, still on his on his BlitzKrieg promoting Valkyrie, will be back on the Today Show Wednesday:

Cruise returns to the morning show Wednesday with Valkyrie director Bryan Singer. Perhaps we'll see a little more action from the actioner.

R.I.P. Dave Bird

I am stunned. I have been so disconnected with the Scientology-related issue over the years that I was completely unaware that Dave Bird passed away on Feb.10 of this year (ironically the same day as one of the biggest Anonymous protest against Scientology, which I am sure he would have loved to attend or at least to see).

I just got a hint of his demise today, reading this ARS post,then confirmed my suspicions through a Google search that led me to David Gerard's R.I.P page on Dave.

Even though Dave was a staunch (and some may say obsessed) opponents of mine, making posts after posts calling me "Barnie", "Barmpot the barmy Belgian", and comparing me to Barney the purple dinosaure because what I was saying made for him no more sense than what the child mascot was blatering, I cannot help feeling deeply sad learning of him having passed away.

I always remembered Dave upon seeing the Rubeus Hagrid character in Harry Potter's movie. A gentle giant with a big beard and a big heart. Of course, "gentle" would not exactly describe Dave's impetuous character, but one thing I know for sure, is that he did have a big heart, and his anger with me was prompted by his sincere activism and involvement against what he considered an evil cult, and me "defending" it.

All of a sudden, I do miss his harangues on ARS and his lyricism in his essay on me: "Hercule Barmpot: the Case of the Missing Marbles", in which he displayed a real talent for writing stories.

Rest in peace, Dave. Even though I do not think your arguments and tactics with me were right, I am certain that your heart-felt involvement in severals causes which you deeply and sincerely felt for will speak favorably for you up there.

Protest Stats

Jens Tingleff points out the Anonymous effect on the annual Lisa McPherson vigil in the U.K., that went from one protest with 5-10 protesters last year, to five protests across the country totaling about 200 protesters.

Even though this is only the tail end of the wave that started a bit more than a year ago and that is slowly dying out, you've got to admit that it did revive, at least for a while, the OG movement that was almost on the bring of extinction.

Same-Old Same-Old

There is a conventional separation in the academic study of religion between the anti-cult movement and the counter-cult movement.

The anti-cult movement qualifies what they call "cult" through certain behavior, to the point they have been accused of "medicalizing" religious beliefs.

The counter-cult movement mostly sees as "cults" those new religious movement that depart from key religious beliefs of their own, namely, that JC died on the cross for our sins.

The anti-cult and counter-cult movement are natural allies against so-called cults, though at times things haven't been so rosy. This was for example the case when Conway and Siegelman started to adapt their "Snapping" paradigm to religious fundamentalists in their follow up book, entitled "Holy Terror: The Fundamentalist War on America's Freedoms in Religion, Politics, and Our Private Lives".

While the anti-cult movement can be a danger to society when the natural outcome of its "mind-control" theory is not tamed, it at least points to a concrete phenomenon best described, in my opinion, by the word "indoctrination".

The counter-cult movement, OTOH, offers no such rationale, other than the fact it "identifies" all the "false prophets" who dare to depart from the sacro-saint miracle of the Good News of JC's advent and who supposedly seek to deceive the elects away from salvation.

That this, by itself, is itself cultish should be obvious for reasonable onlookers, and I must say I fully agree with Monica Pignotti's recent blog post about it.

Not surprisingly, her position gets mis-characterized as "hating Christians", just as anti-cultists call "cult apologists" those who question their absolute certainties, just as the CoS refers as "SPs" those who dare challenge Scientology's grandiose proclaiments, just as fanatical right-wing activists accuse those objecting to a senseless war based on lies as "anti-patriotic".

Same-Old Same-Old.

Off Topic - Farewell Kiss to Bush

Rarely have I seen a shoe throwing more appropriate.

The guy lied to the world with lies as obvious as the nose in the middle of the face, killed hundreds of thousands iraqi and seriously injured many more, held people without charge for years, spied on his own citizens against the most elementary human rights, justified torture, pressured those who disagreed with him with cult-like us-vs-them arguments, spread his right-wing corrupted and retarded moral the world over, irremediably damaged the U.S. reputation across the globe, placed egoist corporate interests over planetary health, left the US with the biggest deficit recorded in history and gave a hand in shattering the world-wide economy into recession.

Thanks to that pair of size-10 shoes, it can now be said that the U.S. and the rest of the world are on solid footing again.

PS - Best blog to follow the unfolding saga of the shoe.

Some of my favorite quotes (culled from various media):

"Never in the history of humanity have so few shoes expressed the sincerest feelings of so many to one who was so deserving of that expression."

"Bush was not offended. He consulted his favorite Middle East experts, Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, and they both assured him that throwing shoes at someone in the Arab world is a gesture of affection, as is calling someone a dog. "

"Please, please, one shoe at a time"

"Recommended shoes for bush runs advice" (actually this one has nothing to do with the incident but it came up in Google search I found it remotedly appropriate...)

"Of course, attacking a country under false pretense is a pretty large insult in and of itself. "

"Bush gets the Boots"

"Had it been Rosa Klebb's shoes, it could have been more effective." (Where's Imelda Marcos when she's needed? )

"Looks like a Great Exclamation Point from the Arab World for All the Deaths and Destruction"

"Ouch, that is the closest thing to justice that the Iraqis could ever see, but that would never even come close to repairing the massive damage that the jihadist (right-wing) US has done. "

"Even showing the sole of your shoe to someone is a major sign of contempt, let alone throwing it. "

"The shoe-thrower's words have been translated as, "Here's your farewell kiss, dog". I don't condone his actions but that's a catchy quotation that'll make it to the history books."

"The neocons nuts were telling us that Iraqis will throw flowers at them once the US illegaly invads Iraq by lying about WMDs and butchering a million Iraqi civilians. All bush got was two SHOES !!!!"

"Great, I can't take pepsi onto an airplane, but this guy is able to throw things at the President of the United States, SCARY!"

"yet I feel bad for Bush, he will go down in history as the worst president ever , his tenure will be remembered for how he tarnished the US image"

"I'm sure George's wife has thrown a few at him. He's had lots of practice."

"A lame rubber chicken would've been more appropriate."

"Wow! That's the first "Shoe-ting" Bush has ever witnessed firsthand, coward. "

"so shoe me"

""A Farewell Worthy of a War Criminal."

"Muntadar al-Zeidi talked to Bush in a way that matched the atrocities he committed and was heard by the entire world."

"lame duck" from the post is my favorite headline on the shoe story

A man beats with a shoe a mock poster of US President George W. Bush with a "War criminal" written in Arabic during a protest in Najaf, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 15, 2008

"I don't think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq." - Georges W. Bush of Bushism Supremo!!!

"I also wanted to speak to the appallingly flippant and insensitive remarks made by soon-to-be-ex-President Bush regarding this incident. [...] He dismisses this profound insult as the act of someone "just seeking attention", instead of the eloquent expression of one man's frustration and rage after seven long years of occupation, death and destruction."

"He deserves to be hit with 100, not just one or two shoes."

"Bush can dodge flying shoes but not what history will remember him as: war criminal"

"I could not think of a better way for the majority of Iraqis ( represented by the journalist ) to express what they think of GWB ( venting their anger but doing no physical harm ). "

"2008 Video of the Year"

"That is by a million miles the best thing I've seen since the year 2000. "

"The man is an instant legend."

"I am going to print up a picture of the soles of my shoes, and then put it on a postcard and send to the White House. [...] I hope all Americans will join me in doing this. Some folks near DC will be throwing shoes at the White House - some folks are mailing in a shoe to the White House (costs about $4.50 to do that)."

"While I don’t condone throwing anything at the president - or anyone else for that matter - as a means of expressing your displeasure, I do think this incident speaks volumes about how President Bush is perceived by the very people he “liberated.”

"THE most beautiful statement made this year BY ANY JOURNALIST. This Journalist is a master of his trade. He summed up the entire situation in a "one liner"

"This is a farewell kiss, you dog."

Related blog entries - R-Bushoe-

About Bernie

There are currently a couple of lengthy threads about me and my web sites on ARS, fostered by my recent open letter to Andreas Heldal-Lund on OCMB asking him to activate my months-old account registration request so I could have my say on Don Carlo's threads about my websites.

In OCMB and on ARS people have made a few speculations as to who I really am. Some people thought that I was from Germany and others that my native language was Dutch

I post pseudonymously, for a variety of reasons, and did so as I started posting as an outright Scientology critic on ARS back in 1996.

There are, however, a few things that I let know about me over the years:

I am from Belgium and my native language is French.

I believe my command of Shakespeare's language is more than fair, but here and there, there may be some idioms or subtlety I may miss.

The latest example of this is my recent blog entry where I claimed that "What is Scientology Queries Tops Google search in 2008". In my mind this meant “among the top”, but, upon a remark in that ARS thread, I looked it up, and now realize that it really means “at the topmost”. I adapted the post title to reflect this.

If you have any more such comments or doubts or whatever, my comments section is open and I suggest you post them there or sent me email before setting off in wild accusation campaigns based on nothing more than a possible misunderstanding.

Though moderated, the comments section is open to every viewpoints, except for spam, off-topic posts, copyright violation, and invasion of privacy. Apart from this, I always post all comments, no matter how insulting, false or misguided (keep in mind, though, that this is a comment section only, not a public forum aimed at extensive debates). I also believe that aggressive comments tell more about those making them than it does about the target of their vindication.

For the rest, what I also made known, was that I was on local staff from 1975 to 1978, during which I went for a lengthy stage at the European HQ in Denmark, then started working for the SoCo bureau at GO WW where I stayed for an other half year before leaving the movement altogether in 1980. My Scientology stories are recounted here, here, and in more details here.

After I quit Scientology, I never had anything to do with it, and didn’t even join any Freezone groups as I simply stopped believing in the tech when it came to spiritual results, my one and prime interest.

I basically “fell” back on my previous spiritual path, that of Theosophy and Krishnamurti, and extended it with things like Alice Bailey (about whom I had a web page until representatives of that movement sent me copyright notice to put what I webbed down, and ignored my request to keep part of it as fair use). Nowadays I am a fan of Eckhart Tolle, which was tipped to me by a Scientology ex-member who was greatly helped by my web site.

After I left Scientology I was fascinated by the anti-cult movement and traveled quite extensively in the USA to personally understand what it was all about, and even had an extensive interview with the dreaded Ted Patrick as he was commuting between San Diego and Los Angeles (where he had to attend one of his numerous suits). My spiritual background, my Scientology experience, and my anti-cult-related researches are part of the reasons my web site and blog reflect a host of what I refer to as “alternative” viewpoints.

It’s funny to read from the ARS thread above (I do read ARS currently but try to avoid starting to post to it for now), that Piltdown Man thought my native language was German. I am not sure why he would think that. I do have a certain understanding of German but when it comes to speak that language, I am rather clumsy.

Piltdown Man is currently one of my favorite posters, even though we probably disagree on more issues than one. I appreciate his witty style and insights, but I have no idea who he could be, even though we both are from the same tiny country.

Most of my friends who were in the org at the same time as myself are now ex-members too (partly because of my own dissent), and all of them unanimously share my moderate viewpoint on Scientology (which leads me to believe from that sample and emails I receive that this is a very common situation when it comes to ex-members). I have heard through some of my friends that they know of someone in Belgium who is more radical or engaged than the lot of us but I really don’t know who it could be. Probably just as well.

More Valkyrie Reviews

I reported about Fox News commenting on the freshly made reviews of Valkyrie but still wonder where these are. Nothing comes up as of now on Metacritics, while only four reviews (with a 2-2 split so far) are to be found on Rotten Tomatoes, while IMDB features a very positive comment.

For his part, Alex Billington from FirstShowing.net loved the movie and gave it a wooping 9/10:

A film that I optimistically went into and walked out loving. It may not be exactly be flawless, but it's already high up on the list of my favorite WWII films, and that's admittedly a very hard list to get on to. The cast may be the weakest link in the end, but Valkyrie literally had my heart racing from start to finish, even though I already knew what that outcome would be.

A Successful Scientology Business

Tampabay.com reports on a successful enterprise using Scientology technology to boost business.

PostcardMania, a direct-mail company that prints and ships postcard advertisements on behalf of businesses nationwide, is 10 years old with 160 employees and 31,000 customers. [...] A few years ago, PostcardMania cracked Inc.'s 500-fastest-growing list. In 2007, it still made the Inc. 5000 (No. 3,130) as sales more than doubled.

Reading through the article you can see traces of quite a few Scientology techniques for business being applied:

• Rewards "upstats", slack the "downstats", and don't let external influence dictate too much what you do:

She's fighting the thought of layoffs. Reluctantly, she trimmed the annual Christmas party budget from $30,000 to $15,000. It won't be at the Don CeSar like last year, but the party will go on. "No way we can cancel it. Our staff worked too hard," she said. "We need it this year." [...]

Helms said there has been no scrimping on salaries, with positions in various fields paying 20 percent above industry averages. [...]

Make sure your core workers are on the bandwagon to beat the slump. Get the eternal slackers slacking somewhere else.

• Outflow is inflow:

'Gendusa has flipped her marketing machine into overdrive. In mailing 120,000 self-promoting postcards to businesses every week, PostcardMania is its own biggest customer.

"You have to be even more aggressive on PR … on buying ads," suggests business consultant David Gerwitz, author of The Flexible Enterprise. "Many of the businesses that succeed during a downturn are ones that put money into marketing as opposed to pulling out." [...]

Gendusa became a marketing devotee during PostcardMania's early days. Orders were coming in, but for months the company was stuck at $20,000 a month in sales. Gendusa doubled mailings of marketing material and soon after sales doubled.

• Don't make credit except maybe for really big investments:
  

Be picky in taking on debt. As a rule, the company saves to have enough cash on hand before buying new furniture or adding amenities. The exception: taking out a $2.4-million industrial revenue bond for a printing plant and equipment that was later repackaged into a $5-million construction loan to finance new headquarters.

• And lastly, the controversial no open criticism and "good news" stance:

Keep morale up. Every week, employees gather to share kudos about fellow co-workers, with one compliment sparking another. No negative comments and no gossiping allowed.

Golden Globe Nominee Cruise Does Elvis

Tom Cruise on Jay Leno's Tonight Show did happen.

Interview part 1

Interview part 2 - with Jay Leno's funny Christmas song about killing Hitler... putting the finger on what may be a weak timing for the film opening, on Christmas day...

But first check this Cruise impersonation of Elvis as a teaser... Nice piece of work, coming after his Golden Globe nomination for his hilarious acting and dancing in Tropic Thunder (nomination about which even Brooke Shields is thrilled).

Should Anonymous Unmask?

I recently made a blog entry entitled “Operation Drop the Masks”. I really did not mean that Anonymous should unmask during their protests, though I admit it really is not obvious through such a title.

What I meant to say was that if anons want to speak, on an individual basis, with Scientologists in an earnest desire to have some dialog going, as was developed in the page I was commenting on, then they should first drop the mask.

Would you like to speak in such a serious manner with an individual hiding behind a mask? I wouldn’t think so. Who would?

This brought me to think of the concept itself as the title of some operation, but I did not meant as something literal.

In reality, I don’t think Anonymous should unmask during their protests. One reason being that the mask now became the symbol of Anonymous itself, and it is even used by critics whose face and identity are already known.

In fact, I wrote about my initial fascination for this concept on my web page:

"What I do find interesting about the protest, though, is the concept of wearing masks. A wall of masks advancing silently down the street in protest of oppression... Hordes of exploited victims of Scientology brainwashing and harassment walking silently. The mask can't speak. The mask has been reduced to silence (OK, they were chanting but I take the mask figuratively here). There's something of a poetic message in that and I predict that all future pickets will be mostly masked ones. Quite impressive..."

I also wrote about the witty choice of the V mask per se:

"You've got to admit that the Guy Fawkes mask is terrific, and it carries another message through its sarcastic smile (or however you want to interpret that smile). Indeed, Guy Fawkes was an Englishman who was sentenced to death in 1605 after he attempted to blow up the House of Lords with kegs of gunpowder. In 2005, the fictional movie "V for Vendetta" revived the event. The masks used by protestors are modeled after those worn in that film, in which a crowd of people wear identical masks to challenge a totalitarian government."

Of course, I did wander about “The Other Side of the Mask” but these were just thinking out loud. To this day, I have not made my mind about it yet one way or the other, but I still think it is a terrific idea, and an indelible symbol of Anonymous. So, no, I don’t think they should start protesting unmasked.

However, if Anonymous wants to move to another stage of their protest, as was developed on the AnonymousHouston page, then yes, they should drop the mask – thus Operation Drop the Mask could be an option. But this should be done in a more subtle way than simply start to protest unmasked. I don’t know how. It’s just a cool idea, a food for thought. And also a witty title.


Blog entries in this series:

• Jan 15: Anonymous - Show Your Human Side
  
• Dec 12: Should Anonymous Unmask?
  
• Dec 11: Operation Drop the Masks