The birth of Scientology

Last year I found the way Scientology was invented by L. Ron Hubbard when I  was looking up old science fiction stories I could download. Just be sheer accident I found a web page which copied a post in alt.religion.scientology newsgroup, dated May 2^nd, 1995.

Famous Scientologist (from the NY Post)

The following excerpt was taken from a magazine called "Saturday Evening Wings," which was printed for awhile in the 1970s. In this interview Harlan Ellison, the science fiction writer, claims to have been present the night L. Ron Hubbard decided to write "Dianetics." Note: Dianetics is  the first Bible of Scientology.

Portions of Ellison´s  interview in “Wings” follow:

Ellison: Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ Sakes! I was sitting in a room with L. Ron Hubbard and a bunch of other science fiction writers…he was famous among science fiction writers because he was the first one to have an electric typewriter.

Battlefield Earth, Hubbard´s second most popular book

Wings: He claimed to have written "Dianetics" in a weekend, and nobody can deny it.

Dianetics, Scientology´s Bible

Ellison: That's true. He wrote "Dianetics" in one weekend…We were sitting around one night. ... who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester Del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich".

….And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big."

We were clowning! You know, " You'll make a fortune!"

He says, "I'm going to do it." Sat down, stole a little bit from Freud, stole a little bit from Jung, a little bit from Alder, a little bit of encounter therapy, pre-Janov Primal Screaming, took all that bullshit, threw it all together, invented a few new words, because he was a science fiction writer, you know, "engrams" and "regression", all that bullshit. And then he conned John Campbell, who was crazy as a thousand battlefields. I mean, he believed any goddamned thing. He really believed blacks were inferior….and he got him to run this article on Dianetics, the new science of mental health.

Wings: Dianometry was the first article, I believe.

Ellison: Right. And science fiction fans will go for any goddamm thing. They'll believe anything, man, they will believe in the abominable snowman and the Bermuda Triangle, in Pyramid Power, in EST, in Scientology, in the Second Coming, they'll believe in any goddamm thing, they don't give a shit. They go to see "Star Wars"; they think it is for real!

The Invaders Plan, sold at

 comic shop dot com

So science fiction fans picked it up, they began proselytizing, he started making money, when he had made enough money he was able to spread out a little more….Then he wanted to get tax-exempt status, so he called it "The Church of Scientology".

Now, they've gotten so big that they own property all over the country, and it is impossible to stop it. They infiltrated the FBI, they infiltrated the tax department, ... the funny thing is, Ron Hubbard and I still occasionally communicate with each other. Every once in a while, a couple or three times a year, we exchange letters. And I write to him, you know, and I say, "Hey Ron, when is this bullshit going to cease? and he says, "It's the good work, it's the good work."

….I guess he got too busy counting his money…..

Source: http://www.islets.net/faq.html#Anchor-Was-47857

Decay of Western Civilization in the 21st Century

A few days ago I read Justin Bieber and Orlando Bloom got into a fist fight in a restaurant in Ibiza. Leonardo di Caprio was there, and rooted for Orlando, who got upset  when Justin called him a bitch and also because his wife, a chick named Amanda Kerr, had been messing around with Justin in the past.

Justin and Orlando fight in Ibiza (NY Daily News)

Press coverage about the fight made me realize Western Civilization has indeed decayed during the 21^st century. Things have got to be pretty messed up when a guy like Justin Bieber gets to be famous for singing this crap

“Baby, baby, baby oooh

Like baby, baby, baby nooo

Like baby, baby, baby oooh

I thought you'd always be mine”

But let´s face it, Justin Bieber is just a symptom. Everything has gone to hell. Compare the 20th century greats to what´s going on today, and it´s enough to puke. We had Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry... 

Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry

...and today they got  Josh Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark playing second fiddle to Jennifer Lawrence.  

Katniss with her wimpy sidekick Peeta

So, let´s get back to music. 20^th Century rock was overwhelmingly superior to today´s music. Just compare the greats (Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors...) to the non greats of today. 

Who dares compare Annie Lennox singing “Sweet Dreams”  with the Eurythmics versus  Rihanna sitting in a bathtub singing “Stay”? The very best 21^st century music act is Bubbles the Clown singing Lorde´s Team, for chrissakes.

Bubbles from Puddles Pity Party sings Lorde´s "Team" 

What else? Take pop art. The 20^th century wins hands down with “Dogs Playing Poker” the world champion with over 3 million copies sold to eager college students.

The great 20^th Century Pop Art Masterpiece, “Dogs Playing Poker”

What´s the 21^st Century contender? Crap like this

21^st Century pop art “masterpiece”, “Minecraft” poster, 

 exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (ack).

What else? What about popular lines? The 20^th century contender: “I´ll be back”. The 21^st Century´s? “LOL, OMG, WTF”.

Guys and gals, this is like shooting fish in a barrel.

References  

20^th Century Music Masterpiece, Annie Lennox drives them wild with Sweet Dreams  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeMFqkcPYcg

Best 21^st Century Music Act, Bubbles sings Lorde´s “Team”  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HtrbMy4mU4

Daily News Gossip Report about the Bieber-Bloom fight 

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/orlando-bloom-confronts-justin-bieber-club-shoving-match-report-article-1.1884882

The Wire Gossip Bullshit about Bieber and Di Caprio hating each other 

http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/08/justin-bieber-repeatedly-humiliated-by-leonardo-dicaprio/375489/

Alaska is full of Venezuelans, yes sir!

Two years ago  I was in Alaska, and I found it was full of Venezuelans. Well, saying it´s full is relative, since the population of Alaska should be less than half a million. The fact is that in Alaska there are  Venezuelans. Venezuelans in one of the coldest places in the world,  covered with ice and snow.

Walking on a glacier 

Photo by 21st Century Social Critic 

I know it seems incredible that people who feel cold when it goes down to 25 degrees Celsius can adapt to that. Plus  they also have to deal with bears,  mountain lions, and killer whales.

The place is so cold that the sea is frozen most of the year. The good thing about this is that if one  falls into the sea one  freezes in about 32 seconds, so the vast majority of Alaskans don´t  care about whales, but are rather  terrified of falling in the  water. Some readers will think I'm exaggerating, so I show you a picture that I took at the beach in Alaska. Note that the sea is really frozen. And if you look carefully behind me you can see Russia.

Half of me standing in Arctic Ocean meltwater somewhere

to the West of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge

I'm a big fan of the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, and I went to visit her town, Wasilla, but she was not there. I'm sure she and her husband Todd would have  invited me to their  mansion to eat a piece of moose, but both were away at work she had with Fox News, and of course Todd had gone along . He is a good fellow, he carries her  things and gives her therapy after work. Below is a shot of one of the typical restaurants in Wasilla, where they serve excellent moose:  

One of Wasilla´s premier eateries, photo taken by B. Leza 

But back to the subject of Venezuelans in Alaska. It seems that they are alive and kicking. The fact that they can  survive tells us that,  if necessary, we  can send a Venezuelan into exile anywhere.

Indeed, when I returned from Alaska I  wrote a Venezuelan friend who works on a project in New Guinea (this is where the natives ate Rockefeller´s nephew), and  the  mercenary said if I paid more he was coming  to Alaska as well.

This confirms that if  NASA wants to send someone to Mars, it should drop off application forms in Caracas asking for volunteers, and they will find a host of educated  Venezuelans willing to go if the gig pays in hard currency.  Those Venezuelan cosmonauts will do great, settle on Mars, and eventually get their Martian citizenship and everything. 

The US raisin cartel

In the United States there is a law that controls the price of raisins to keep it high. This law was enacted in 1937 and has had very good results for some producers and packers of this product.

Raisins

Other producers suffer. They are trying to have the Supreme Court  declare the law unconstitutional . As for consumers, depending on the type of grape and the year,  they pay 10 to 50% more than European consumers pay for their home grown grapes.  

The price of grapes depends on quality and where they are grown. The grapes for premium wines are worth more than the grapes  used to make raisins. U.S. law regulates the market for raisins. But in areas where farmers receive higher prices for raisins thanks to this old law,  they will plant more lower quality grapevines unfit for wine.  

I think it must have an impact on the price of grapes in general. If not, I don´t  understand how it´s possible to see the price differential between the US and Spain.  This is more so  when we consider that in America there is a lot of land, the price of fuel and water are lower than in Spain, and on top they use cheap  immigrant labor which  they exploit illegally  without mercy.

I was reading an old issue of The Economist magazine which  has an article on this topic. I buy this magazine from time to time but don´t  recommend it because the owners are neocons,  people like Aznar, Blair, Bush and the Canadian Harper. Sometimes I get so mad at their contents I put the magazine away, then pull it out a year later after I calm down.  

So, the article describes a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, where Marvin D. Horne and other farmers  asked the Supreme Court to order the Department of Agriculture to leave them alone and stop insisting they must pay the government now for grapes the farmers grew, which  the law demands they should have delivered to the government for free in 2003.

You see, the raisin price control law created  a commission made up  of 47 farmers and one consumer. This committee decides each year the amount of grapes that the government will expropriate from individual farmers. The commission  takes this share of the harvest, sells part of it wholesale,  in some cases it  gives the grapes  away, and sometimes they export the grapes so they don´t impact the US market. After the government  sells its share of the harvest, it pays the farmers some of the proceeds.

Horne the  rebel

In 2003 they said they were going to expropriate 43% of the harvest. This angered a group of farmers in California led by Mr. Horne. They began selling their harvest  without sending the government the 43 % share it had demanded. The USDA responded and sent the farmers a bill, asking them to pay the government its 43 % share of what they earned. So the legal battle ensued as farmers resisted, and the case has been around in the judicial system ever  since.

The case  has  reached the Supreme Court, which decides whether the U.S. government has the power to force these farmers  to hand over a large share  of their  harvest, and then wait to see if the government  commission pays them something.

I think the law is silly. First because it forces the farmer to deliver part of the crop without knowing how much he will eventually receive. Second because it increases the price of grapes to the consumer. Third, it increases the price of  grapes used to make wine. And this means that  U.S. wine costs more than in Spain. I think this  is good for the Spanish  wine industry, because  the overpriced grapes make America  a weaker competitor in the international market.

The law doesn´t  benefit all farmers. If it did, Marvin D. Horner and his colleagues wouldn´t have continued litigation for ten years to eventually reach the Supreme Court. They must be very upset with this goddam  system, and they  have fought their case to  the bitter  end.

Who benefits from this law? My guess:  big farmers who are commission members. And companies which package  and market raisins. I can´t imagine who else benefits if the market is choked in order  to raise consumer  prices.

This case is going to take a lot more time. The Supreme Court will rule, then it has to go back to the lower Federal Courts to work out the details. 

What remedy is left to Mr. Horne and his friends if they don´t  win their battle? They will have to convince Congress to change the law. And as the two  reigning U.S. parties are always fighting and spewing nonsense, I don´t  think this would  go far. We'll see what the Supreme Court says, and meanwhile keep drinking  Spanish wine,  it´s  better than California wine  and costs less because grapes are a lot cheaper in Spain. 

----

The latest I read about this case says the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Mr Horne and friends, and referred the case back to a lower Federal Court for a detailed decision on this matter:

http://jurist.org/paperchase/2013/06/supreme-court-rules-in-california-raisins-takings-case.php

Depending on what that court decides, the US public may see cheaper wines in a few years. Or maybe not.