Mayors find happiness booklet irritating
Android Cat
Palm Beach Post
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbcsouth/content/south/epaper/2008/03/08/s1c_happiness_0308.html
HIGHLAND BEACH - "I'm very pleased to offer this book," says a note on the
back of a booklet titled The Way to Happiness; about 20 were delivered
recently to town hall.
The note says more copies may be obtained from "Harold Hagelman, Town of
Highland Beach," followed by the town hall address. The booklet front says
it's "presented by" the mayor.
What are these?
"No, no, no, no. I didn't sponsor anything," Hagelmann - his name was
misspelled on the booklet - said Friday. "They just sent it to me. I never
asked for anything. I never sent them out."
Neither did Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams, who got about 20 booklets, also
"personalized," last month.
Officials are distancing themselves from the 54-page booklet, which says it
may be "the first nonreligious moral code based wholly on common sense."
The author: Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The publishers: a foundation
linked to the movement.
Officials of other local municipalities contacted said they don't recall
receiving copies.
Abrams remembers only that he shoved them in a "junk" drawer at his office.
"I get all kinds of publications and junk mail," Abrams said. "That's how I
treated it."
And Hagelmann said, "They put my name on a lot of things. It goes into the
round bucket."
Mayors in Dallas, San Francisco, and Winnipeg also were not amused to see
their photographs, cities' seals, even campaign slogans on the covers,
according to news articles. But when a Scientology center opened in Buffalo
in 2003, Mayor Anthony Masiello approved distribution of the booklet with a
picture of city hall and the city seal.
"Scientology is an abusive cult group, and any elected official who
knowingly allows his office to be connected with the distribution of
Scientology literature has betrayed the trust placed in him by the
electorate," wrote David S. Touretzky, a Carnegie Mellon University
professor and Scientology critic.
The Glendale, Calif.-based "Way to Happiness Foundation International" says
it is "not part of any religious doctrine" and so governments are free to
share the booklets. It charges a 7-cent license fee per booklet.
"You are improving your own survival when you present several copies of The
Way to Happiness to friends, associates, employees and customers," its Web
site says. "In this way, you help others better survive and lead happier
lives."
The foundation - which argues its only connection to Scientology is that
Hubbard wrote the book - says it sent 2,800 mailings, about 250,000
booklets, to mayors, community groups and businesses across Florida.
The booklets were only samples, it says, to encourage people to buy more
personalized copies. After receiving complaints, it will send only "stock"
copies, with no personalization.
===
I knew the mayor booklets had to be part of an overall campaign. Should we
be worried that more mayors haven't made a fuss about getting them, or just
chalk it up to busy mayors or staff who immediately round-filed it?
And I know *exactly* which Wikipedia article the writer checked and where
the 7 cent reference came from. *Yeehah*! (The pswd "fish" pdfs mentioned
that the booklets cost around 12-14 cents to print in bulk, and therefore
*one third* of the money "donated" towards them is clear profit for CST/ASI.
Now that Wayback has resurrected them, I'll have to think of a way to cite
that...)
--
Ron of that ilk.
"Irritating", hahahahahahahahaha!
Lermanet.com Exposing the CON for over 10 years!
> Mayors find happiness booklet irritating March 8, 2008, Eliot Kleinberg,
There was posting about them buying some expensive binding equipment
for "Publishing on demand"
a few months ago..
Folks were wondering what that was about
capricious
Hopefully they'll find good warm homes with real nice fireplaces.
I'm real curious about the physical book itself as my background
revolves in the printing industry. Theres no way they had them
printed for anything less than probably 50 cents each and that is a
huuuuuge stretch, mostly depending on the binding. I'd imagine, if
its a hardcover as I think I've read it is, that would require a
stiched spine and can be very expensive. It'd be closer to around $2
each bare minimum in that case.
So, monetarily, we're talking a minimum of a $70k investment. This is
assuming no slave labor was involved, but that assumption is hard to
make.
Anyone know the full details of this book? I've never seen one for
myself :\
Hartley Patterson
> And Hagelmann said, "They put my name on a lot of things. It goes into the
> round bucket."
Much like the 'Panorama Exposed' DVD from 'Graeme Wilson, Chairman of
Freedom TV'. I really tried, but I couldn't find any unsolicited recipient
who had actually watched it before making use of the round bucket.
--
Hartley Patterson
http://www.newsfrombree.co.uk
http://news-from-bree.blogspot.com
Anonology
I'm sure they dropped a bundle on postage too, even at the discounted
rate the packages probably wouldn't come in for less than a dollar
apeice... i'm sure they considered it an investment...
jesusG...@googlemail.com
way José , the public pay for anything like this as a 'donation'. They
pay for WTH in block of 12 booklets and the postage. And at this time
the Anon campaign is helping them squeeze even more cash out of the
suckers because any 'donation' can be said to be to fight this
suppression. So what they do is have an IAS reg event (ask ex-
churchies what those are) and that's where they talk (pressure the
hell out of) the members into donating huge amounts of money for
things like this. JT just donated $1.5 didn't he?
Every Scientologist is expected to pull all the stops out and don't
worry if you don't have your credit card with you at the event. We
(the IAS) already have the numbers. Can you imagine the story they're
running on their members right now and how evil they're painting
Anonymous??
Piltdown Man
Android Cat <androi...@hotmail.com> wrote...
<snip>
> I knew the mayor booklets had to be part of an overall campaign. Should
> we be worried that more mayors haven't made a fuss about getting them,
We don't know that they haven't. All we know of is a few instances where
their irritation made it into a small local news item, which in turn made
it onto the internet. Enough instances to know this is a large-scale,
worldwide campaign. But how many more mayors may have sent angry
cease-and-decist letters for instance, or asked their staff or the police
to look into it further, or reacted in any way that didn't make it onto the
internet, we simply do not know.
> or just
> chalk it up to busy mayors or staff who immediately round-filed it?
It seems reasonable to assume most of those booklets immediately went the
way of all junkmail.
Piltdown Man
capricious <poke...@beer.com> wrote...
> I'm real curious about the physical book itself as my background
> revolves in the printing industry. Theres no way they had them
> printed for anything less than probably 50 cents each and that is a
> huuuuuge stretch, mostly depending on the binding.
It's only a 64 page booklet (small pages, in very large print).
> I'd imagine, if
> its a hardcover as I think I've read it is, that would require a
> stiched spine and can be very expensive. It'd be closer to around $2
> each bare minimum in that case.
It's normally a softcover, sold at US$ 1.5 if you order the minimum of 12
copies, a price that drops to just under one dollar if you order 6000
copies at once. A customized cover costs 25 to 11 cents extra per copy.
There is a "Hardcover Special Gift Edition", which is described as
"handcrafted" and "printed on special paper", which will cost you a mere
US$ 79. That one, you don't have to buy by the dozen.
> So, monetarily, we're talking a minimum of a $70k investment. This is
> assuming no slave labor was involved, but that assumption is hard to
> make.
Any estimate of the cost of production of Scientology publications in
real-world commercial terms is nearly impossible because they produce these
things in-house, using slave labour, and they don't have to worry about wog
financial concepts like depreciation. As long as they've got the equipment
and the staff to man it, their costs are essentially only the purchase of
the raw materials.
And remember, there's no investment by CoS itself involved in such a
campaign. Unless they've changed their MO drastically, all these booklets
must have been bought by individual Scientologists before being "donated".
> Anyone know the full details of this book? I've never seen one for
> myself :\
You can download PDF versions from:
http://www.twth.org/about/resources-and-downloads/e-books/
Unusually for CoS, these files are actually free -- but you can't print
them.
(I just noticed something strange: the English version I downloaded a while
back doesn't even allow cutting and pasting from the text, but the three
translated versions I downloaded just now do. Still no printing though.)
Piltdown Man
Hartley Patterson <hpt...@daisy.freeserve.co.uk> wrote...
> androi...@hotmail.com:
>
> > And Hagelmann said, "They put my name on a lot of things. It goes into
> > the round bucket."
>
> Much like the 'Panorama Exposed' DVD from 'Graeme Wilson, Chairman of
> Freedom TV'. I really tried, but I couldn't find any unsolicited
> recipient who had actually watched it before making use of the round
> bucket.
Like most Scientology attempts at propaganda, it was so unsubtle that every
normal person immediately spotted it for the kook product it is. The first
few paragraphs of the cover letter they sent with it are enough to tell
that, no need to even pop in the DVD. What's more, the unsolicited
recipients they sent it to in the UK are exactly the kind of people who are
used to dealing with a steady stream of junk mail like this. They're so
isolated from wog reality that they really don't realize anymore how
strange they appear to normal people. That goes for the contents of TWTH
too, not just the idiotic idea of putting mayors' names on the cover as if
they endorsed it.
Thanks to this thread, I've also made a small discovery. I'd made fun a
while back of there being two separate translations of TWTH into Dutch: one
in plain "Dutch", and one in something called "Dutch-Youth", and wondered
what the difference was. I've now downloaded them from the twth.org site.
It turns out they couldn't decide whether to translate "you" with the
polite form "u", or the more casual "jij". So they just did both.
Strangely, French and German (which have the same distinction between
"vous" and "tu", and "Sie" and "du") don't benefit from this sublty
differentiated treatment.
l.l.lipshitz
wrote in <f7a19fa0-1f87-46cf...@i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com>:
[...]
| Anyone know the full details of this book? I've never seen one for
| myself :\
the one i have is 6.75" tall by 4.25" wide by .25"
thick and 96 pgs long. it looks as tho the pages
were printed double-sided with 2 pages on each side
of the sheet, then laid flat with the cover over
them and stapled thru the middle, folded, and the
edges trimmed even. the trimming s decent but the
stapling is cheezy.
don't know when mine was made, i've had it about 8
yrs i'd estimate. maybe they're a little better done
nowadays, especially when faking mayoral endorsements.
-elle
--------=[ l.l.lipshitz * elkube(at)lycos(dot)com ]=--------
time flies like an arrow. fruit flies like a banana. -gm
Fredric L. Rice
>http://www.palmbeachpost.com/pbcsouth/content/south/epaper/2008/03/08/s1c_happiness_0308.html
>The booklet front says it's "presented by" the mayor.
The mayors need to SUE the fucking crooks who libeled them. Politicians
whose reputations are shit upon through lies need to sue for their own
good, and claiming to support the Scientology crime syndicate is WORSE
than claiming to support NAMBLA.
---
2. Write a letter to the editor. You are free to write about anything you want
with one rule: DO NOT MENTION SCIENTOLOGY OR THAT YOU ARE A SCIENTOLOGIST.
Hartley Patterson
> Thanks to this thread, I've also made a small discovery. I'd made fun a
> while back of there being two separate translations of TWTH into Dutch: one
> in plain "Dutch", and one in something called "Dutch-Youth", and wondered
> what the difference was. I've now downloaded them from the twth.org site.
> It turns out they couldn't decide whether to translate "you" with the
> polite form "u", or the more casual "jij". So they just did both.
> Strangely, French and German (which have the same distinction between
> "vous" and "tu", and "Sie" and "du") don't benefit from this sublty
> differentiated treatment.
'Tu' would not do, I'd only use it to address naughty children to be on
the safe side. In Dutch I gather it's a closer call.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_T-V
R. Hill
wrote:
> piltd...@ivehaditwiththespam.sorry:
Nah, "Tu" works fine in French for the purpose.
Ex.: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9calogue_(Bible)
"Vous" would sound funny, since it's a preachy booklet.
Ray.
R. Hill
Duh, never mind, you're right. I was trying to apply "Vous" to the 10
commandments, *that* sounds funny. But TWTH is just L. Ron preaching
to us, "Vous" is appropriate.
Hartley Patterson
> Duh, never mind, you're right. I was trying to apply "Vous" to the 10
> commandments, *that* sounds funny. But TWTH is just L. Ron preaching
> to us, "Vous" is appropriate.
God spends most of the Old Testament addressing His Chosen People as
though they were naughty children, so 'tu' is better, in fact lays it on
better than in English! 'Thou' doesn't have that implication of
superiority, and just sounds archaic.
Hartley Patterson
> The mayors need to SUE the fucking crooks who libeled them. Politicians
> whose reputations are shit upon through lies need to sue for their own
> good, and claiming to support the Scientology crime syndicate is WORSE
> than claiming to support NAMBLA.
The excuse is they are 'just samples'. Actually I think that's the truth!
The organisers in LA forget to ORDER the Orgs to put in a covering letter
to this effect, forgetting that what isn't Ordered is Not Allowed. The
Orgs just remailed the parcel. Total Fail!
Gerry Armstrong
I just found this Vancouver Sun article that shows the cultists were
scamming mayors with The Way to Happiness back in 1985.
The Way to Happiness op has morphed a bit since 1985 -- writing, or in
the above case miswriting, the mayors' names onto the booklets is
Miscavige's "bright idea" -- but the intent is the same.
[Quote]
The Vancouver Sun, Tues. December 17, 1985
MAYOR STANDS BY DAY FOR CULT FOUNDER
By Sarah Cox
The mayor of Langley says he didn't realize he was endorsing the
founder of the Church of Scientology when he recently proclaimed Dec.
7 "L. Ron Hubbard Day" in Langley.
But after discussing the matter Monday with city council -- which had
no part in acknowledging "L. Ron Hubbard's contribution towards a
safer, saner world" -- Mayor Reg Easingwood says he won't retract the
commemoration because it was made solely in honor of Hubbard's book
The Way to Happiness.
"It was granted on the basis of the book, not on the church. I know
nothing about the Church of Scientology at all," Easingwood said
Monday.
"No, no, I wouldn't lift something like that. It was given in good
faith. I still think they're good books and very useful books."
He said the book takes a stand against things such as drug abuse and
destruction of the environment.
The Church of Scientology, founded 29 years ago by Hubbard, has never
been far from allegations of scandal and cultism.
Hubbard, not seen in public since March, 1980, was convicted of fraud
by a French court, and dozens of civil suits have been filed against
the church by former members who claim to have been harassed and
swindled. The U.S. internal revenue service is also seeking $6 million
in taxes and penalties from Scientology for the years 1970 through
1974.
Easingwood, who is not a Scientologist, said he would have been
happier if members of the Concerned Businessmen's Association of B.C.
(CBA)-- who approached him at the beginning of December about the
proclamation -- had told him of Hubbard's connection with the
Scientologists.
"I would have liked it a bit better if they'd been up front about it
and told me. Why, in the name of God, didn't they come out and tell
me?" asked Easingwood, who plans to *meet today with CBA
representatives to discuss the issue.
Ald. Anthony Hargrave said Monday that council didn't plan to
challenge the commemoration, which acknowledges Hubbard as "one of the
most prolific and influential writers of the 20th century."
"Some people may think badly of the Scientologists, but the mayor
certainly wasn't aware that L. Ron Hubbard was associated with the
Scientologists. Reg (Easingwood) had no idea whatsoever.
"The book doesn't mention anything about Scientologists. I'm sure most
people aren't making that connection."
CBA chairman Leah Schmiedeke said the group, comprised of about 25
businesses, is not solely composed of Scientologists. She didn't know
how many members were not affiliated with the Church of Scientology.
"Nobody really cares as long as they agree with the precepts of the
book," Schmiedeke said Monday. "The idea is to get some kind of
acknowledgement for the man who wrote the book.
"Anyone who reads it would like the book. It's not a holier-than-thou
type of book. It doesn't tread on anyone's ground. It's all pretty
common sense stuff."
Schmiedeke, a Scientologist, said the CBA became active in Langley
last summer when it helped local residents clean up Douglas Park.
"We've been doing quite a lot of work down there."
She said promoting the book is currently the CBA's main activity.
"It's the vehicle that we use. It's the main thing. (The proclamation)
has nothing to do with the Scientolo-gists. It's not an arm of the
church."
Hargrave said Easingwood was approached by the CBA respresentatives
personally Dec. 6 and did not have much time to consider the
proclamation.
"There was never a mention of retraction. The council didn't do it, so
they can't retract it."
The CBA told Easingwood that Hubbard had received more than 100
proclamations and awards for his work from mayors, governors and
public officials around the world, and asked him to proclaim an L. Ron
Hubbard Day in Langley, said Hargrave.
Hubbard's 1950 book Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health,
set out the theories incorporated in Scientology. Scientologists
believe the mind records all experiences through many incarnations.
[End Quote]
I know it's almost unbelievable that the Scientology cultists have
been operating their The Way to Happiness on the world's mayors for
over two decades. So I'll web a scan of this 1985 Vancouver Sun
article a little later as proof.
© Gerry Armstrong
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org
Fredric L. Rice
>FR...@SkepticTank.Org:
>> The mayors need to SUE the fucking crooks who libeled them. Politicians
>> whose reputations are shit upon through lies need to sue for their own
>> good, and claiming to support the Scientology crime syndicate is WORSE
>> than claiming to support NAMBLA.
>The excuse is they are 'just samples'. Actually I think that's the truth!
>The organisers in LA forget to ORDER the Orgs to put in a covering letter
>to this effect, forgetting that what isn't Ordered is Not Allowed. The
>Orgs just remailed the parcel. Total Fail!
It smells like a very convienient "mistake." The crime syndicate has been
claiming that Coca Cola, Dell Computers, and other big corporations hand
out Scientology insane spew lately, and this is the same thing.
Piltdown Man
Hartley Patterson <hpt...@daisy.freeserve.co.uk> wrote...
> pilt...@ivehaditwiththespam.sorry:
>
> > Thanks to this thread, I've also made a small discovery. I'd made fun a
> > while back of there being two separate translations of TWTH into Dutch:
> > one in plain "Dutch", and one in something called "Dutch-Youth", and
> > wondered what the difference was. I've now downloaded them from the
> > twth.org site. It turns out they couldn't decide whether to translate
> > "you" with the polite form "u", or the more casual "jij". So they just
> > did both. Strangely, French and German (which have the same distinction
> > between "vous" and "tu", and "Sie" and "du") don't benefit from this
> > sublty differentiated treatment.
>
> 'Tu' would not do, I'd only use it to address naughty children to be on
> the safe side.
That would make it excellently suited for TWTH. The whole thing has the
tone of a pompous, condescending adult addressing a child, and one he
considers not very bright. Hubbard on the subject of government: "One can
also read up on it: it's not a very difficult subject if you look up the
big words." Oh thank you, wise Mr. Hubbard!
> In Dutch I gather it's a closer call.
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_T-V
Maybe you should look up the distinction in Dutch in a proper source, if
you base your impression on the paragraph about it in that Wikipedia
article (where Dutch is mysteriously added as a subsection under Polish).
It's only three sentences long, and each of them is incorrect.
1. "Il existe une forme de vouvoiement, qui utilise le pronom _U_, de la
deuxième personne du singulier, à la place du pronom _jij_ ou _je_."
The distinction also exists in the plural, "u" vs. "jullie". The pronoun is
written "u", the capitalization is very oldfashioned. The author also
neglects to mention that there is a third personal pronoun for the second
person singular, "gij", which complicates matter further, especially since
its usage differs considerably depending on where in the Dutch-speaking
area one is, and whether one is dealing with spoken or written language.
2. "La forme du verbe reste donc identique."
It most certainly doesn't.
3. "L'utilisation du vouvoiement est plus rare qu'en français, en
particulier à l'oral."
This could possibly be true I suppose, but I'd really like to know which
comparative statistical information about French and Dutch this author has
to state this as if it were fact. I would be very surprised if any such
information exists, and that it's anything more than a subjective
impression, coming from someone who doesn't even know the basics of
conjugation in Dutch.
Yet another Wikipedia article I came across by pure chance that shows it's
not a reliable source of information.
Hartley Patterson
> Yet another Wikipedia article I came across by pure chance that shows it's
> not a reliable source of information.
Probably written by a suppressive French speaking Belgian :-)