London: Beautiful Panorama Photo

Jason Hawkes: September 2006 Archives: "Image_2184.jpg"

I just saw this one on Reddit.com, referred from today's top user. This is probably one of the nicest city panoramas of London I've yet seen. Unfortunately, my familiarity with London stops at the data I had when blogging about the new Church of Scientology of London that Mr. David Miscavige gave his grand opening speech at last fall on Queen Victoria St. Honestly, I don't know if that's even in the frame, but the photo sure looks cool.

Take that Press: Scientology Berlin Opening

If you check any of my last posts, I wasn't too impressed by the media coverage granted to the Scientology Grand Opening in in Berlin. The media (obviously under someone's influence) kept trying to downplay the thing, saying that there were only 150 people there, that it wasn't really happening, that it was all just protesters, that the public weren't invited, etc. All utter, complete, total fabrications.

A friend of mine just had his wife return from the Grand Opening there, as she was representing her Scientology Church in Florida. The final count of Scientologists there ended up being something like 5,035 or something like this. Perhaps I'm off by thirty or something, but it was in that range. Another friend of mine told me that even hours after the Grand Opening, it would take 20 minutes just to walk from one office in the buiding to another, because of the mobs of people one had to walk through.

2 days after the opening, there were still mobs of Scientologists and non-Scientologists alike hanging around the place.

So, in any case, I just see it fitting and funny to point out the fact that when you're a reporter, and you come to an event like this Church of Scientology Grand opening with your story already written for you, completely abandoning any journalistic integrity, you'll end up getting burnt. Unfortunately, this is now the case -- as the Grand Opening in Berlin was a huge success.

Ever since I heard Mr. David Miscavige announce the new Berlin church at my Church's Scientology New Year celebration, I knew this was going to be big. Well, all the press controversy turned out to create is to make it bigger. So, I guess their lying did some good for once!

High-Tech Approach to Religion - Scientology in Berlin

Everyone is talking about the new Scientology Church in Berlin. Nasty politicians in Germany are pointing fingers at one another (especially the ones with their vested interests to protect) and the general public has just been pouring in to the building to find out what Scientology is all about. It has been at the top of Google.de news for the past 48 hours.

Now, that is where things get interesting -- especially from a technical standpoint. There's a curious problem that you get into when you're trying to explain to someone what your religion is all about. You're either very well versed in language, and can easily explain it in ways that someone can understand, and do this one-on-one, or you figure out a way to explain it much faster to more people.

Just try doing this for something like Shinto. What is it all about? You need to read a lot, and probably talk to some Shintos before you really grok it. Scientology is similar, in that you either have to talk to a Scientologist who's in the know for some time, or just go in to this new Berlin organization.

Inside the organization are some of the niftiest displays and films that have been devised specifically to solve this problem. Explained at a Scientology event by Mr. David Miscavige -- Chairman of the Board of Religious Technology Center, which is the holder of the Scientology & Dianetics trademarks -- this organization includes panels that literally let anyone walk in, touch a screen, and then by themselves -- with no input from others or person trying to explain anything -- get a full explanation of the various facets and practices of Scientology.

You can see some of this here:

A gallery of photos from the grand opening of the Church of Scientology of Berlin is available at the Scientology Berlin website.

The screens there just let you walk up, and visually get an explanation of the various principles of Scientology - such as the A-R-C triangle, which the average person got introduced to during Tom Cruise's wedding.

In any case, I would highly advise anyone who has been trying to find out what Scientology is really all about to actually just walk in to this new Berlin Church (or one of the other Scientology churches which have such panels in them) and just spend some time alone finding out what this movement is all about.

Other Churches I know of which have such panels are:

• Church of Scientology of New York
• Church of Scientology of London
• Church of Scientology Stevens Creek (San Jose, CA)
• Church of Scientology of Madrid, Spain
• Church of Scientology of Tampa, Florida
  

References for this article:

• Official David Miscavige website
• Scientology Germany Website
• The Scientology Handbook
  

L. Ron Hubbard "An Introduction to Scientology" represents over 100,000 man-hours of film restoration

Just released on DVD last night was the filmed interview with L. Ron Hubbard, An Introduction to Scientology. This was released at the Scientology New Year celebration in Los Angeles just now, by Mr. David Miscavige - Chairman of the Board of Religious Technology Center. Similar to the release done last March by Mr. Miscavige of L. Ron Hubbard's Clearing Congress, the DVD An Introduction to Scientology encompassed hundreds of thousands of man-hours of work to restore and produce - quite a herculean task.

In this filmed interview -- the only filmed interview L. Ron Hubbard ever gave -- he answers the most commonly-asked questions about Scientology.

The questions answered in this DVD include:

"What is Scientology?"
"What is the Mind?"
"How did L. Ron Hubbard come to develop Scientology?"
"How did he make these discoveries?"
"What is an auditor?"
"Why is Man on this planet and what is his purpose here?"
"Why is many basically good?"

I would definitely recommend it for anyone who is endevoring to find out what Scientology is all about. More data on it can be found at www.scientology.org/interview/.

Tom & Katie - Scientology Wedding: Mission Accomplished

From People Mag:

It's official: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are now husband and wife. The couple exchanged vows Saturday in front of more than 150 guests at the Odescalchi Castle in Lake Bracciano, Italy, their rep, Arnold Robinson, confirms to PEOPLE.

"The wedding was absolutely beautiful," says a guest.

With thousands of fans, photographers and TV cameras watching from afar, Cruise and Holmes were joined by family – Katie's dad Martin walked her down the aisle – and a slew of celeb pals, including Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, Brooke Shields and Chris Henchy, Victoria Beckham, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, and Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy, among others.

The sunset ceremony was performed by a Scientology minister, according to a statement from their reps. The wedding party included Cruise's children, Isabella and Connor, the best man was Cruise's best friend, David Miscavige – the head of the Church of Scientology – and Katie's sister Nancy Blaylock served as the matron of honor.

L. Ron Hubbard Clearing Congress Release by Mr. David Miscavige

It was announced by Mr. David Miscavige earlier this year at the L. Ron Hubbard birthday celebration that the Clearing Congress lectures L. Ron Hubbard gave in Washington, D.C. in the 50’s were fully restored and put into DVD format for anyone to see. This whole presentation by Mr. Miscavige was recently put on-line on the Religious Technology Center website.

As an engineer, I can definitely appreciate the amount of work that went into this. As one can imagine, over a 50-year time period, films start to deteriorate and die, leaving much to be desired on colour and detail. Just look at what they had to do with the original Star Wars films, and they were done only in 1977. They had to have serious work put in to them before their release as the "Special Edition" Star Warses. Well, honestly the amount of work put in to this pales in comparison to what was put into these lectures. It was gone over in detail at this Birthday celebration, but I'm happy to see it's now on the web as well.

Now these films are available to all - and having watched them all myself earlier in the year, I can appreciate the level of communication they now afford. I would definitely recommend them to anyone wanting to find out the nitty-gritty on what Scientology is about straight from the Founder of Scientology himself.

Getting the Message Out for The Way to Happiness

As a Scientologist and an engineer, one can appreciate the technical and physical difficulty of getting out a simple message to as broad an audience as possible, especially when it's a simple message of hope, a message that something can be done about the problems of life, and that one can be happier and more capable than one is.

So, it was with great pleasure that, at the anniversary of the International Association of Scientologists this year, Mr. David Miscavige and other Scientology executives unveiled a brand-new campaign for The Way to Happiness, a common-sense guide to morals written by L. Ron Hubbard.

Released at this anniversary were a number of extremely emotional public service announcements, all conveying an aspect of The Way to Happiness. The one that hit me the most was the one on the precept Be Competent, which is something I've always striven to do myself, and instill in those that work with me.

Anyhow, they're all available to watch on the TWTH site, so I invite you to check this out!

Everybody's Talking about the Scientology London Opening

As far away as South Africa, there were still articles running about the Grand Opening of the Church of Scientology of London. I just was meandering about, and found this one on a South Africa news zine, covering the opening, which I thought was pretty cute:

The revamped building is a short walk from St Paul's Cathedral, and sits next to an Anglican church. Some parishioners walked out of the church following their Sunday service and stayed to watch the ceremony.

The ceremony started with a procession by the London Scottish Regimental Pipe and Drum Band, finishing with an explosion of multi-coloured ticker tape. Scientology leader David Miscavige addressed the several hundred Scientologists who attended the outdoor ceremony, describing the occasion as "momentous".

"This day will go down in history. Of all the foreign lands where LRH (Hubbard) lived and worked, he called England home," Miscavige declared.

After the opening ceremony, the public were invited inside the building to discover more about Scientology. One room is devoted to Hubbard's accomplishments, while one exhibit claims "the Holocaust was conceived and propagated by psychiatry".

Bagpipers!!

Check out the bagpipers at the Church of Scientology of London Grand Opening! I love bagpipers - gets one into the "Freedom" mood, for sure. This is from the new photo gallery the church just put up on this site with Grand Opening photos.

David Miscavige at the Grand Opening of the Church of Scientology London

As stated in my last post, the new Church of Scientology of London is spectacular. These organizations just keep getting more and more impressive! I was at the Grand Opening of the Church of Scientology of Buffalo, and so I know how impressive that building is. But this one is twice as impressive. I can't wait until some interior shots get posted on ScientologyToday, as I really want to check that place out. It's definitely the type of place where I know it would be dead easy to go in and find out all about what Scientology's all about.

"This new church packs the full body of L Ron Hubbard’s technologies as derived from the greater well of Scientology knowledge," said Mr. David Miscavige, “and, as such, it provides the full gamut of Scientology activities for the betterment of mankind."

Extremely Impressive Scientology Organization Opened in London

Scientologists in London just opened 3 new buildings in the London area, including a new headquarters on Queen Victoria street that more than quadruples the space that organization has to care for its public.

Guest of honor, Mr. David Miscavige, was the keynote speaker at the opening event, where he said,

"This new church packs the full body of L Ron Hubbard’s technologies as derived from the greater well of Scientology knowledge, and, as such, it provides the full gamut of Scientology activities for the betterment of mankind."
A look inside this building shows that it's packed from floor to ceiling with displays, film rooms and seminar spaces so as easily show to the entirety of London what it is that Scientology offers, and what everyday people can do to improve their own areas using Scientology technology.

Have a look at the article on the Scientology London website.

Google Analytics

I just painlessly installed Google Analytics on this blog, as I couldn't stand being without statistics for any length of time. I've been a management by statistics fanatic for years now, as it's the only way to manage anything. Not by opinion (as is way to prevalent in marketing) but by cold, hard statistics. Again, I got the notion from an extremely good Scientology event, where I decided I'd stop using the crystal ball to try to decide my future, and instead use some proven Scientology management techniques.

As noted, this install was utterly painless. I worked for Webtrends for some time, and also worked as a Web Analytics consultant, and so I'm quite familiar with web stats programs - but I have to commend Google for how well they took Urchin's ASP analytics software and integrated it into their accounts system. It's extremely informative, and was an utter breeze to put in. Now, if you're looking at this, I can probably tell where you're from!

Taiwan: Does it just need more Hi-Tech, or Something Else?

I wrote an article a few days ago on India, as that is a country that just intrigues me with the sheer number of very able people as compared with the extreme poverty and disorganization most of the country suffers from. It’s something that fully seems like an ideal candidate for Mr. Hubbard’s management technology, as detailed by Mr. David Miscavige in his This is Scientology presentation, or in his presentation at the grand opening of the Church of Scientology of Africa. It’s something that with a little application of basic organizational technology, and a few ideal Churches of Scientology in the area, an immense change in the scene could be effected.

However, change gears to a location like Kaohsiung in Taiwan, and you get a fully different scene than that in India. Taiwan is the product of a strong-willed, exceptionally productive people not wanting to live under communist rule, and as such living under constant suppression from threats of military action or the simple suppression that comes about through countries not even willing to recognize you as a sovereign state.

Despite this, however, you have a place like Kaohsiung, which is now the 3rd-largest seaport in the world, and has some of the tallest buildings and beautiful downtown areas of anywhere in Asia. So, what are they missing in terms of technology? In this case, I would be hard-pressed to say it has anything to do with their ability to build tall buildings or printed circuit boards.

I would submit that it’s instead things like the technology of overcoming suppression - which individuals in that country need just as much as the country as a whole. It’s things like the technology of dealing with a seemingly dangerous environment, and how to stay sane and causative in a world that the media makes seem dangerous. It’s also what inspired me to write this on Taiwan — the technology of how to stop drug abuse before it starts — education.

With items like that to help the individual, I would have to say Taiwan could be made a better place to live.