I am still tired and I hope I didn't forget too much.

Because the ICE train I took last year wasn't as fast as I thought, I rented a car from a Stuttgart manufacturer. That car was sooo wonderful and moments later I was already in Leipzig and I also set a new personal speed record on the Autobahn.

Saturday there was a press conference with several ex-scientologists from all over the world. Then we could watch the movie "The Profit". It is the fasinating story of a con artist who later founds his own cult, that later sets up itself as a religion. Sure, he has some problems from time to time but he is successful, i.e. makes a ton of money and brainwashes many people around the world. The concept used was the one used in "citizen kane", i.e. it starts with the cult leader dying and his life is reviewed.

No famous actors but many familiar faces as "special guests". Let me just say that when "Dr. Bob" appeared everyone was cheering.

What amazed me most is that people who aren't in the movie business were able to get this job done. I talked quite a bit with Patricia Greenway (the producer). I explained her that I watched that movie also in the fear that maybe it would look like a home movie, or a movie with lots of "cheap stuff", anachronisms, etc, but no, everything was fine, like any other movie. Patricia told me that she has looked in the movie database www.imdb.com for goofs and she was working hard to avoid such things:

she has browsed through old SEARS catalogs to see what clothes, furniture etc people were having at certain times, she photographed the actors with polaroids to detect continuity errors, etc. And she also told me about the behaviour of the union leaders, who not-so-politely asked to please hire THEIR expensive members. Highlight was a 1 1/2 hour confrontation which ended with one of them apologizing :-) And how Mike Krotz saved the movie when an important prop had "vanished" and the CW and Tampa police didn't bother to arrest the thief.

I suggested her to write all these adventures on the website www.theprofit.org - much of those moviemaking skills are unknown to ordinary people.

On the evening there was a surprise - at a nearby table sat Sylvia Görg and her boyfriend Tom. She is really as nice as she is on the german newsgroup. Sylvia has not only been beaten up by scientologist Jörg Tippmann, this guy is now on an incredibly dirty black propaganda spree.

Now Tom has one problem: he looks like a refrigerator. So the problem is of course that some people try to make it look as if *he* is the dangerous guy. Anyway, Sylvia has her attorneys and hopefully it will get "done" soon and I wish her all the best.

Next day we first had a workshop at EBI, and then the ceremony at the old stock exchange. And then he came: Dr. Norbert Blüm. His history of being a cult critic can be dated back to 1981. And he really made a great speech. 1. "We don't need diplomacy now, now it is time to fight - not with rockets, but with arguments!". 2. And he sang the song "The thoughts are free". Public was cheering. Several high-level people sent greetings, among them the federal president.

Then we had a party at the restaurant "Auerbach's Keller" which Johann Wolfgang Goethe immortalised in his drama "Faust".

http://www.grafikstudio.de/goethe/faust113.htm The restaurant dates back to the 16th century and Goethe had many drinks there as a student :-) Several people got autographs from Blüm, Ilse Hruby from Austria gave Blüm her book, Thomas Gandow gave him a WOG [TM] cap (a creation of Gerry Armstrong), which I fotographed him wearing.

Tilman
-- Tilman Hausherr [KoX, SP5.55] Entheta * Enturbulation * Entertainment tilman@berlin.snafu.de http://www.xenu.de Resistance is futile. You will be enturbulated. Xenu always prevails.

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