Every year the C of S New Years Event is held at the Shrine Auditorium
in LA.
The event is always held a few days before the New Year so that the videos can then be edited and sent to the outer orgs to be shown on New Years Eve.
Hubby and I got all decked out in our New Year's finest, and we went out for an early dinner(we had reservations). Hubby had the surf and turf and I opted for the prime rib. It was definitely yummy. We had wine with the meal and toasted our New Life and the New Year.
After dinner we headed out for the event.
The event started as always with DM making his way to Center Stage from Stage Left. As always there was tons of applause and DM had to keep giving Acks to the audience to get them to stop. There is really no doubt that the crowd loves this guy. DM is wearing his tux and looking very fit.
There was a video recapping the 2002 accomplishments narrated by the ever-obnoxious Jeff Pomerantz, with his phony, loud, overbearing, infomercial type voice. The fact that Int Management continues to use the overblown windbag for the voice of Scientology is very telling.
They are obviously clueless about what Scientologists think about him.
DM tells us that the "Wake Up Call" that occurred as a result of 911 was not just for Scientologists but also for the whole world and that some people got it and others didn't.
As an example of how screwed up things are, DM tells us that the reason George W. Bush wants to go to war with Iraq is that Saddam is "the guy who went after my Daddy."
At this point my husband turned and looked at me with his face all scrunched up and he had this expression that said, "What the fuck is this asshole talking about?" I gave my husband one of those glaring looks that only a wife can give a husband that means "Shut the fuck up and don't make a scene!"
DM goes on to say that we are living in a time in which we are experiencing a "morality crisis" and cited Enron and other scandals of corporate American. I noticed he failed to mention the Reed Slatkin/Tony Hitchman Ponzi scheme but then I really didn't think he would bring it up.
What he did mention was a group that you'd have thought would be taking up the slack for the "morality crisis" but isn't because of the problems it's having. The Roman Catholic Church and the pedophile stuff. DM "invalidating" the RCC is definitely out Way To Happiness.
DM tells us that "we" are the future because we do not lack certainty.
Then he gave some stats on religious groups websites. Now he didn't say if these stats were weekly, monthly or whatever.
168,000 hits to Jewish sites, 633,000 hits to ALL Christian sites combined and 1.1 or 1.2 hits to all of "our" Scientology sites combined.
I think it was 1.2. But the Hubby thinks it was 1.1. I told him that DM would not use the numbers 1.1. in connection with anything Scientology so it must be 1.2.
So this means that Scientology gets more hits than all Jewish and Christian sites combined.
The WIS [What is Scientology Exhibition]
You have to understand that during the New Years Event lots of numbers are being tossed about. Hubby and I tried our best to keep track of the numbers and sometimes we disagreed with what was said but mostly we agreed on the numbers.
So with that in mind,
The WIS Exhibition went to 33 cities around the world.
The deal with these WIS Exhibitions [now referred to as WIS Ex.] is that they don't care so much about raw public or wogs on the street.
The idea instead is to get VIPs, Opinion Leaders [OLs] and officials into the exhibit and to PR and schmooze them.
It seems that in Zurich, the C of S has had difficultly in the past getting permits to hand out leaflets in public places and the C of S was in some litigation there for several years. Due to the WIS Ex., someone spoke with some official who got on the cans and found Scientology to be extremely interesting and told them they could have whatever permits they wanted.
In Munich, they met with VIPs and got allies for CCHR to work against the psychs in Germany.
In Madrid, they managed to get study tech into a Catholic school that was having difficultly of some kind.
In Milan, they briefed the President of the City council on Narconon after which the President said that the City wanted to form a partnership with any effective group and the C of S was certainly an effective group.
In Toronto, some official from the Jamaican Community received auditing and a Sikh leader in that city is opening up a Narconon Center in Peterborough.
There was a video where they interviewed a bunch of these VIP's and instead of putting up a graphic with the persons name, they would use a graphic that said "Former Advisor to the Justice Minister of the Philippines." Jesus God!
In total there were 200,000 that went through the WIS Exhibition and 50,000 got an intro Service.
50,000??? This must mean that they took an OCA or got a pinch test.
Somewhere in all this we started whispering to each other and the next thing I know we were into the VM [Volunteer Ministers] Campaign.
DM explained to us that after 911, the MEST of the building got pulverized and created these unsafe levels of toxins in the area. It seems that these toxins directly affected the rescue workers and fire fighters that worked in the Ground Zero area.
There is something called "Rescue Workers Cough" or "Fire Fighters Flu"
and it seems a lot of the workers got good and sick but nobody wanted to pay to handle it. Per DM the Powers That Be did not really want to do anything to help these people.
When Tom Cruise was at the site, he decided that "something could be done about it." Tom got involved and the IAS gave a grant to set up a New DETOX center. And in Sept of 2002 The Hubbard Detox Center was opened some place in NYC to handle these rescue workers. Basically it is a Purif Center.
Then a video was shown of about 10 rescue workers/fire fighters that did the Purif. They all gave very nice success stories about feeling so much better or about how their whole lives had changed.
At the end of the video there is the usual standing ovation. In case you didn't know, Scientologists at these events almost never give a standard round of applause. Nope. When a big "win" is given, everyone in the place STANDS and applauds. That's what's expected and anything else would be unthinkable.
So anyways... After the video of the Purif success stories, we have everyone standing and applauding and the camera pans the front rows and who do we see standing up in the front row? Why it's Tom Cruise! He's smiling and shaking a clenched fist triumphantly in the air. He is very happy to have contributed. I can't remember the last time I saw Tom at an event. This was big doings!!
Back to DM and the VM news.
DM says we now have a total of 15,000 VM's and in Hungary, the only people allowed in to handle the big Flood they had in the summer was the military, the Red Cross and the VM's. DM even read a statement from a letter sent by the Vice General of Civil Defense in Hungary who said "thank you to the Church of Scientology for saving us from the flood." [Hubby gives me a look out of the corner of his eye and I jab him in the ribs]
And then DM says that one of the things going on was that the military started sending people to the VM's for task assignments cause the VM's were the ones that were really in control. At this point my husband turns and looks at me with his head cocked and makes a face that says how much of this bullshit are you going to force me to listen to.
Those of you who have been married for any length of time know that you can read your spouse's facial expression and know exactly what it means. Of course I had to give him my wifely glare to keep him in line. ;-)
The VM's had a big win in Johannesburg. It seems this past summer there was some big international conference and things were very tense. At one point a cop shot an employee of the hotel where all the international representatives were staying and the tension really got bad. So the VM's arrived and went into action and started passing out the Way to Happiness and Cal Mag to calm everyone's nerves! LOL!
According to DM it worked so well that the Dir of Police Services contacted the Church after and the Church is now delivering some kind of VM workshop thingie to police stations in Johannesburg.
There is a Bishop doing the Student Hat in Cincinnati and is now giving "intro lectures" to his own congregation.
Then right before a VM testimonial video is shown, DM tells us that the reason the VM's do all of this is not because of the international acclaim they get from governments and world leaders, but they do it to help. LOL!
The contrary thing about the VM testimonials was how many of the VM's said they were having wins from introducing people to Scientology and getting them onto the bridge.
Next up is Karen Hollander. Karen is dressed in all black and tonight we don't see any cleavage. She was doing the ABLE wins segment of the show.
The ABLE groups are called "Social Betterment" Groups. Or if you are a critic--"Front Groups."
Wins
Some school in LA got a 3-year government grant to get study tech into this school. Of course I don't know which one.
One million Way To Happiness were distributed in Israel and Palestine. [This means that the mid east crisis will be over any day now]
The Way to Happiness has some campaign going on with the LAPD. After passing out the WTH booklets in one neighborhood there was a 30% reduction in crime. But wait. This story gets better.
It seems that the LAPD was so happy and pleased that during a parade, their motorcycle cops stopped in front of the LRH Exhibit in Hollywood and saluted LRH. I wouldn't have believed it but they showed a picture of it.
[Of course my first thought on that was I wonder how much the CofS "donated" to the LAPD special fund for that little show.]
In Bali there are a bunch of people working in the Ministry of Justice who are running the Way to Happiness/Criminon Program in 350 prisons in Indonesia.
This program is now in 28 countries and 1800 prisons worldwide.
Then we get a description of the drug scene in Australia and a history of Narconon there. It started with relatives of addicts treating them in their homes. Later 2 public Scientologists provided Narconon with a center. But the big news was that then Narconon got from the government full charity status and 14 acres of land with 6 buildings on it making it the biggest drug rehab center in Australia!!!
DM is now about to introduce Mike Rinder who will be speaking about WISE. DM tells us that billions of people don't have enough to eat and this is where WISE comes in, because LRH admin tech brings prosperity.
You see, people who don't eat enough aren't sessionable and can't be audited.
Mike Rinder is just a complete indoctrinated robot. When he speaks he is so unnatural but always gets the applause he wants because the audience always knows when they're supposed to applaud. He gives a win, then he puts on this really enforced and faked smile that makes him look completely retarded, and then he stops talking and looks at the audience as though they were already applauding.
Rinder talked about how they have distributed the Management Series Volumes to libraries and government offices and other places. And how that created a demand for more LRH admin tech. So they sent out another 60 plus thousand Volumes of the OEC.
OH yes, and Rinder has this habit of using the exact same line when giving a win.
Now THAT'S saving lives with LRH tech or
Now THAT'S clearing the planet, pause, retard smile, applause.
Come to think of it, he's not the only one who does this. They all do this to some degree. It occurred to me, and the Hubby concurs that all of their speeches are probably written by the same person or by different people using the same hat, and that there's really no interest in making them sound like individuals with differences. The goal is to make them all sound standard. They use similar words and word phrases. I'll be sure to pay attention to this at the next event to give more specific examples.
Anyway.. Rinder does one of these "Now THAT'S saving lives with LRH tech and the camera pans the crowd and stops on Edgar Winter sitting in the front and he looks like a cadaver. I mean the guy looks half dead. It couldn't have been any funnier if they tried but of course we had to keep our TR's in and not laugh out loud.
Rinder told us that there were 130,000 businesses and organizations using LRH admin tech worldwide.
"Now THAT'S getting LRH admin tech onto the comm lines of the world"-- Retard smile, pause and applause.
Mark Yager is next on the line up and Mark always has this very nervous energy about him. It's almost as if the guy is just afraid to Screw up because if he does, DM will kick his ass.
Mark does the spiel on Dn and Scientology expanding into new areas.
A video is shown of a woman who went to Rwanda and she goes to see the Mayor of Kigali. In her first contact with the Mayor she gives him a Book I session and the Mayor goes exterior and decides that he must get Dn and Scientology in his area. So he gets a bunch of other mayors and city admin people on the bandwagon. Three years later how many people in his part of Rwanda are now using Dn and Scientology? 60,000 according to Mark.
Mark tells us IHELP has 2X'd the number of field auditors in the world in the past year and that there are now 1400 new Dianetics groups that are producing 7000 hours of auditing in the field each day.
And Mark also reported that the Mission in Lafayette, Louisiana would be set up at the first of the year to deliver a government funded Dn course to students of the University of Louisiana.
Mark told us that Hungary has 17 new missions and that there were 80 new missions opened in 2002 worldwide, which is more than double the number that was opened in 2001. Also 300 public have already signed up to open new missions in 2003.
After that I believe we go back to DM who shows a video of the history of the Mission in Greece.
DM doesn't seem too fond of the Greek Orthodox Church and he tells us that the Greek Orthodox Church wanted to "solidify a monopoly on New Ideas." HA! He should talk.
DM goes on with this whole PR thing that I really don't follow because there are so many generalities in these things, but the bottom line is that DM reports that they had a big win with the Greek Parliament or maybe it was a member of the Greek Parliament, and now the country has "opened up". That means that Scientology can safely deliver there and that the "stops" have been handled.
Next we see ED INT Guillaume Lesevre. He was not as upbeat or as bubbly as he usually is. He is still the most upbeat of the bunch but he did not have that usual high energy level of upbeatness.
ED Int does the awards ceremony for the POWER FSM's, which are done at each New Years event.
A Power FSM is someone who gets in 100 new people or more in one year.
There were 51 Power FSM's and 41 of them came from the US. Go figure.
So all the Power FSM's are called up to the stage and ED Int and Yager pass out the awards. [A good time to go to the ladies room but I was back in time to see Lesevre and Yager pass out the last awards.]
Central Africa.
ED Int also told us that The President of Rwanda was contacted about Scientology and he was sold on it and introduced his entire cabinet to Scientology. This contact happened about 3 years ago and now, three years later there are 3000 groups in 30 different cities making up 400,000 Scientologists in Central Africa.
Good Grief.
STATS:
ED Int said that in 2000 there were 1.5 million Well Done Auditing Hours (WDAH)
In 2001 there were 2.2 million and in 2002 there were a total of 3.8 million WDAH worldwide.
There were over 120 OT 7 comps in 2002.
DM returns to wrap up this event, that lasted less than 2 and a half hours.
DM said that in 2003 they were going to put more money into the org buildings than they had in the past 10 years combined. Also there was going to be a tech release that would speed up progress on the Bridge.
He wrapped up with a plea that everyone should put their shoulder to the wheel to get LRH's tech to the planet.
"For God Sakes, help us bring it to all of man."
The message was not uptone with DM's Tone 40 voice. It was rather low toned and pleading.
The last part of the event was a tape play of some LRH doom and gloom about how easily the planet could be wiped out by massive weapons and how much it depends on Scientologists for its salvation.
At the end of that, everybody jumped up to applaud but the Hip Hip Hooray wasn't very enthusiastic.
The event ended in sort of a Rush and then we had Doug E. Fresh to entertain us.
The Hub and I made a casual but steady beeline out of there. On the way home I started making notes to keep the event data from getting lost and the Hubby was quite helpful. Then we discussed how different it is to watch an event now in comparison to how it used to be for us as Indoc'd Scientologists. We were both very happy that we no longer thought and felt like the Indoc'd ones and were very happy that we made it through that last wall of fire.
Cerri.
"Informing people doesn't involve trying to silence those who disagree with you." --Prignillius http://www.truthaboutscientology.com/stats.htm
http://www.holycows.org/