Another record-breaking 4th of July sensation for Will Smith.

In spite of fears that the recent controversy about Smith so-called "Scientology school" would hamper the release of his latest movie, and in spite of poor reviews, "Hancock" is another record-breaking 4th of July sensation for Will Smith. It made $107.3 million since its July 2 opening, and $66 million over the weekend. Thanks to the impressive gross, Smith kept up his currently unrivaled streak at the box office. "Hancock" is his eighth-consecutive #1 opener and also his eighth to earn at least $100 million. And if that's not impressive enough, "Hancock" marks the fifth huge July 4 weekend opening for a Smith-starrer. This one, however, was his highest opening gross ever for the weekend.

Random news:

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1590478/story.jhtml
http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/zap-hancockinternationalopening,0,941173.story
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_popmachine/2008/07/hancock-crushes.html

Anonymous vandalizes public properties in "peaceful protests"

Anonymous vandalizes public properties in "peaceful protests".

'Faceless people' revealed as marketing stunt for new Lotus Eagle

'Faceless people' revealed as marketing stunt for new Lotus Eagle

Handling Internet Propaganda

Before the Interne it was easy to "handle" the public with questions such as

"do you believe everything you read in the newspaper?"

The approach nowadays isn't that much different, except that the motto now is

"do you believe everything your read on the Internet?"

In spite of the countless hours critics put in trying to give Scientology a bad name, all of it can easily be wiped off in a few minutes, and critics' very propaganda turned against them.

Here is a concrete example on how this works.

Two Hours Non-Stop Harassment until Stopped by the Police

Another example of Anonymous "peaceful protest", that in fact is nothing more than harassment and stalking. They are so blinded by their "activism" that they even boast about their exploits. Here is a video where you can see a few minutes of what the stalker himself describes as two hours of hassling a scientology stress test until the police told him to stop. Also watch the comments to see how his fellow anons widely support this "heroic" act...

Smack It

Anonymous now capitalizes on the incident they provoked in the July 3 Amsterdam mini raid. However, the video is funny, made on rhythm with the "smack it" hit.

More Handcuffing

Jeta, in an attempt to back-pedal more on the disastrous boast about Anonymous plan to handcuff the head of OSA, claims that the plan was only to handcuff her to the reported, totally oblivious that this does not lessen the gravity of the act in the least, then keeps on laughing and boasting more about the fact that she would be forcibly subjected to information she can not be confronted to due to her position in Scientology. :

"Are you so sure about this that you have to shout? Well then, let me tell you something: the TV crew was there to record the event of a KRO reporter handcuffing _himself_ to Julia Rijnvis. Julia is the director of Scientology's dirty tricks department in the Netherlands (called the Office of Special Affairs), the KRO is a Dutch national broadcasting corporation.

Have you noticed the difference between handcuffing someone, as has been stated before, and handcuffing yourself to someone?

The formula of this program is that the reporter stays attached to the person until he gives answers to questions he usually refuse to give. One could, for example, ask Julia: "is this the core of Scientology's secret upper level teachings?" (showing her a print of the OT III story), next to a print of a court document where Scientology claims to have the copyrights on that story.

Julia isn't "clear(tm)" yet (will take her twenty more years in the cult I guess), so you can imagine her reaction. :)"

The excellent reply from Piltdown Man is to be found here. In the meantime, Jeta himself seems to be the subject of some controversy, whereas the one making that controversy seems to be himself the subject of one.

Comparison to Ingrid Betancourt Rescue Unwarranted

Jeff Jacobsen compares the truly fantastic rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from Columbian rebels with the stealing of the OT III documents by Robin Scott because in both cases they impersonated insiders and played on the lack of internal communication. While this is true, one needs to keep in mind two fundamental differences that makes the two events in fact non-comparable.

1. The risks involved in the rescue of Ingrid Betancourt were extremely real, whereas the risks involved in stealing the documents were almost nil in comparison.
   
   
2. The rescue operation of Betancourt was to redress an extremely wrong situation were an innocent woman has been kidnapped and held in horrendous inhuman conditions for more than six years, whereas the operation conducted by Robin Scott aimed to steal documents that rightly belonged to the CoS.

Freewinds Sailing Again Better than Ever

The Freewind had been stuck to port due to an asbestos problem. This greatly rejoiced critics who considered this event an "epic win". The CoS, however, fixed the situation with such a speed and efficiency that let critics astonished. In a dedicated thread, anons are let with expressions such as:

"damn, and I was hoping they'd scuttle the deathship"

"I am not an expert, but this seems almost impossible in the time frame they had."

"There is no way in fucking hell they managed to clean that ship in time. "

In fact, not only has the CoS cleaned up the asbestos, it also used this opportunity to completely renew the interior. The 20th Maiden Voyage Anniversary event was held on the Freewinds this past week and the four upcoming events will be shown as per this link at all the local orgs.

Speculations about Excalibur

Anonymous has yet another thread full of speculation rather than hard facts, this time about Excalibur, the elusive work of L. Ron Hubbard that never was published and remains a mystery. They then jump from there to the "Admissions", supposedly written by L.Ron Hubbard too. Since the forum is moderated, there are no dissenting voice to point to the fact that these Admissions are in no way authenticated, and they based their whole discussion on the false assumption that LRH indeed wrote them.

In an ironic twist, one anon realizes that "The Crowd", work by Gustave Le Bon that resemble the little we know about Excalibur, "has a disturbing resemblance to the idea that is Anonymous". Indeed, since, in spite of all their boast, the anonymous phenomenon is hardly more than an ignorant crowd mentality reflected through the Internet singularity.

Operation Freakout Never Executed

RoadRunner reminds us that Operation Freakout was never executed. This has already been debated to death by Diane Richardson in 1997. Operation Freakout is yet another old and debunked myth Anonymous uses to justify its crusade against the CoS, without even realizing that it was nothing more than something that existed on paper only.

Beck New Albums is Out

Beck new album is out.

Hollywood.tv Not to Pass Judgement

Hollywood.tv "is not there to pass judgment on celebrities, so we don’t care if they are Hindu, Christian or into Scientology."

David Feherty Regrets Savaging Tom Cruise

David Feherty, the former professional golfer who now works as a writer and broadcaster and who savaged Tom Cruise because he said depression was best cured by physical exercise, now says that part of his reaction was due to the fact that

"if I kicked the hell out of Tom Cruise, I'd feel a lot better about myself"

That may also be partly why celebrities are so easy targets for so many.

Increase of Neutral Sites on Google Top 10 on Scientology

Google top 10 on Scientology used to be replete with critical web sites. Now only xenu.net and scientology-lies.com remain. A good trend is that relatively neutral web sites now figure prominently on the top ten: Wikipedia (which is even on 2nd place now ahead of xenu.net), religioustolerance.org (4th), and beliefnet.com (5th). The rest are official Scientology web sites (four in total).