Aaron Smith-Levin did a video about the recent closure of the “Celebrity Centre Munich” and the abandoned St. Pete “Life Improvement Center” opened by the Tampa “Ideal Org.”
As every good scientologist knows, it is a High Crime in scientology to close or combine orgs.
Since David Miscavige has taken over scientology, there have been many other closures and “combinings” — including St Hill Foundation, specifically started by Ron himself with a lot of policy written by him about why “Foundation” (night and weekend) orgs were needed.
Because Aaron specifically focused on the closing of the Celebrity Centre Munich, I wanted to provide the list of “Celebrity Centres” around the world from the last edition of What is Scientology?
From this list, the ones I know have been closed/combined:
Paris combined with the Paris Org
Munich combined with Munich Org
London combined with London Org
Las Vegas combined with Las Vegas Org
Portland combined with Portland Org
Nashville converted into a regular org
Dallas converted into a regular org
No new ones opened. Some of these others may no longer exist — like Vienna and Florence, but I have no way of confirming.
Miscavige has effectively destroyed the “CC Network” much as he has done with the Mission Network.
The org network appears to be surviving, because of the real estate investment. In fact, they are every bit as decimated as the other two.
Under the brilliant leadership of Mr. Mickiwicz, scientology is shrinking t a faster rate than at any time in its history. Straight down and vertical. Hip hip hooray!
Hello, I was looking for this information, I am a never scientologist but I follow all the major youtubers and sometimes blogs and news on Scientology and its abuse. I live in Florence Italy and when I heard on Aaron’s video that there is, or was, a Celebrity Centre here I was shocked as I have rearly seen any traces of Scientology around Florence. I checked the address online and it’s the same as the one listed here in this blog, I will be going to check it out in the next few weeks as it’s only a 15 minutes walk from my house and then I will be able to confirm if it’s open or close. Would pictures be of any interest?
Thank you Laura. Yes, pictures would be wonderful! I always appreciate when readers send in pix and other information about their local area.
How lucky are you to live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world!
Perfect! I’ll do my best, very curious to see this place as the area is a very upper class residential area, but not not at all near the tourist attractions, so there wouldn’t be many people who walk by it. Yes, Florence is indeed very beautiful, I am very lucky to be from here, I can’t complain!
Laura
Something I have pointed out a few times before is that while I was in Scientology (1989 -2014) and after I left I have several times encountered people who told me they traveled across the US and tried to stop at orgs or missions that were listed in Scientology publications and found the buildings to be empty. Several asked the locals if the org moved and reported that they said it closed down years ago and there’s no Scientology org or mission there now.
I posted a few comments about this on Facebook and almost immediately started getting more people telling me the same thing happened when they were looking for orgs and missions that are listed by Scientology!
I think this is really worth looking into because a few people who are giving lots of money every year might stop if they realize Scientology is not even the thirty thousand or twenty thousand they estimate but might be shrinking under David Miscavige and down to ten or seven thousand!
Think about it! If David Miscavige has goofed the floof so bad he let Scientology decline from its peak of perhaps a hundred thousand or less in 1980 or so down to perhaps a tenth of that they would realize he has been a complete and total failure and stop supporting him!
I think a significant portion of the people still in Scientology would be shocked to learn about closed orgs and missions being false reported as still thriving for years after they close.
A quick map search of the Paris location reveals it is a closed up space with no sign and a closed metal roll top gate. So much for Paris!
I wish I could send you photos of Paris church that I find on Google search
it’s not closed at all
I wish!!!
Thank you for your attention to my post
Wishing you well
Yeah team Mike Rinder!
Over the years what I thought in conclusion was Hubbard was the problem, and almost all persons who rise into the leadership options allowed positions to do big strategic things, the leaders who mostly don’t really have the latitude to fix things, are hampered by Hubbard’s “High Crimes” rules and penalties.
And then yet despite this predicament, there are a few loophole policies, policies which align with how Hubbard himself would decide to change things.
One big principle is also a condemnation of the “leaders” of the last many decades of Scientology, is the Class 8 Course, which most leaders of the last 50 years did not become themselves Class 8s, and didn’t learn in their bones, the loophole called “arbitraries” principle.
When a Hubbard policy itself becomes an impassible block or “arbitrary” then the leaders in management need to change the options and allow the followers to get around the “arbitrary” block.
Combining orgs in some instances, is just such an arbitrary.
The all time “lost” piece of policy option, is the “blue pencil” principle of the OEC Volume 2 policy which I brought up to a younger gen person who is straight up reading LRH’s policies on the internet.
Miscavige frankly is not allowing for MORE arbitrary changing options to get around these Hubbard in fact arbitraries.
=================
Which is why I think the biggest arbitrary Hubbard set up, is the way Scientology is even disseminated, and the Hubbard arbitrary not to theoretically get into the weeds publicly about the Hubbard “auditing” and the Hubbard “exorcism.”
Scientology is auditing and exorcism, and Hubbard set up the biggest arbitraries to not tell in detail what the Scientology subject’s auditing and exorcism step by step “commands” used in the Scientology “ministerial” sessions by the auditor.
The auditor is really a pseudo-therapist. And on the exorcism levels of Scientology, the auditor is the exorcist.
So in fact Scientology is pseudo-therapy and exorcism, training to become the pseudo-therapist and also become one’s own exorcists and to have other Scientologists (Class 9 Scientologists) do the exorcism on fellow Scientologists.
Hubbard set up so many arbitraries about how to do this Scientology subject, it’s what has everyone, all through the movement’s history, stifled, over and over, with how to proceed, and not bump into one of Hubbard’s arbitrary rules.
But, this all said, there are just too many “High Crimes” (each of them are Hubbard in fact arbitraries if you correctly view them one by one).
Miscavige is not up to the task of fully reforming Scientology.
I thought one big massive way that you, Mike, and the other leaders of Watchdog Committee and Exec Strata ought to do your reform of Scientology, was eliminate, each major arbitrary of Hubbard’s, and “blue pencil” them out of the movement.
There is even procedure, from Hubbard, how to do this, called “piloting” and just pilot the major changes, watch how those changes develop for a year or two years, and then more widely implement the change if the “pilot” changes prove successful.
This in itself, “piloting” is prone to failure too though, and is not a panacea.
Because NOTHING one pilots, will work.
Why?
Because of the other conclusion, which is that the “tech” of Hubbard’s is quackery. The auditing (pseudo-therapy) and the exorcism (OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7) all don’t “work” as Hubbard falsely always claims, as in Keeping Scientology Working policy.
This is the serious serious problem, deeper within Hubbard’s created subject.
Hubbard set up so many “arbitraries” that even if Miscavige undid them all, by “combining orgs” (which frankly IS the right thing to do), the next bigger problem is the deepest lies of Hubbard as written in Keeping Scientology Working.
If a person replaces “Scientology” with the word “Quackery” in the “Keeping Scientology Working” policy, and every time Hubbard says “tech” or “technology” you also replace it with the word “quackery”, then you have spotted the bottom most problem with Scientology.
Scientology is quackery, and all administrative fixes to selling the quackery, are just that, quick fixes but long range unsuccessful.
Most sensible outsiders would agree that combining orgs, and even vanishing some of them, is right.
Why keep selling Scientology in places it won’t sell. Downsizing is normal.
——————————-
The correct public for Scientology quackery, is people who believe in future lives, and believe that their past lives implants and trauma and locks, etc, can all be swished away with the past lives remembering and discussing and “as-ising” of one’s past lives “case” impediments.
And the correct public for Scientology exorcism is people who believe that disembodied spirits/souls do cohabit with us humans in intense numbers, and that Scientology’s long drawn out exorcism procedures of OT 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 are effective in exorcising these spirits/souls off our human body will benefit us.
And then just more focused, willing Scientologists who know what their subject is about, and willing to become the pseudo-therapist and exorcist roles.
The whole administrative setup is just bogus.
Hubbard was massively wishful thinking that this bloated administrative setup of the movement is viable.
The NON viability of actually gaining new pseudo-therapists and new exorcists, is the bottom line that Scientology isn’t viable, no matter how much money is put into Scientology by richer Scientologists.
Scientology is auditing and exorcism, and they aren’t even allowed to properly admit this, and sell honestly what they are to the world.
Downsizing is correct, and also dropping all of the ruinous fair gaming, and just drop OSA, just drop all the Int Justice Chief nonsense.
Also, they should consider disposing of all their paper files and case folders, and just dispense with the Emeter and dispense with folder upkeeping for people’s “case folders” and “ethics folders” and so on and so on.
They NEED to downsize a lot more.
There’s no good way to downsize them, Hubbard made downsizing such a taboo, another “High Crime.”
Another arbitrary. All on Hubbard.
Hubbard’s at bottom at fault, not Miscavige, he’s merely barely doing what Hubbard would condemn him a “reduced to bare minimum” managing.
The only way to solve Scientology is quit it, and then reflect if one’s past lives are real, and if one’s past lives “case” is “real” and whether one is loaded with “body-thetans” (hitch-hiking spirits dumped onto earth by Xenu, if that’s real or not) and then just eject all the way out of the Scientology beliefs.
Chuck Beatty
xTeamXenu75to03
Well, in my opinion Scientology is a covert effort to mentally enslave humanity by Hubbard and he as Nibs described tried to take a black magic ritual and using hypnosis spread it out over decades to make the victim into a mental pseudoclone of Hubbard and thereby give him a fake kind of immortality.
So, it never becomes something beneficial since it never was anything beneficial.
By the way I think that quackery is a very good substitute for Scientology in Scientology doctrine! I also think the phrase “people doing what I tell them to!” by Ronald Hubbard is a good substitute for Scientology! If you read every place you read Scientology before and substitute that phrase then it becomes clear what Scientology is all about!
How can you read that policy letter and not cry?
Hi Mike,
didn’t there use to be a Celebrity Centre in Auckland New Zealand that I cant find any reference to any more?
There were once “Celebrity Centres” in smaller cities sold as sort of mission packages, as shown on really old lists. There were a whole lot of them in places sometimes in places that made no sense at all, and that are long gone. I think Dallas may even have been one of those.
How would miscavige spin this to fit his *fastest growing religion* narrative? The few still in have to notice the closings.
I pray that you can all be reunited with your loved ones, chilldren,parents. I feel this business, organization, cult whatever adjective is appropriate is not a lot of time left.
I pray people show them the kindness and understanding they are going to be in such need of
There was a celebrity centre in Toronto.
It closed many years ago.
Sadly the CC in Hwd is built like a castle and just as hard to get into! Practically impossible to protest and you never see any cultists outside.
MORE ON IT HERE: https://angrygaypope.com/celebrity_centre/index.php
Great article and video from Aaron. Just a small correction. The Dallas CC did not merge with the Dallas Org. It just vanished and up sprang the brand-new Dallas Org.
Just a thought.
Correct you are. I have amended the post, there never was an “org” in Dallas, just like Nashville.
Hy Mike Rinder
Unfortunately yes you have a church in Paris but not only in Paris
In France there is 6 city’s churches and 1or 2 missions
In citys like Bordeaux Toulouse Cannes, etc.
I hope DM is not thinking to come in France 😁
Tom C.has met all of our presidents since 2007 Sarkozy
And about two months ago he received an honorary membership from the air army
Scientology is considered a cult in France but they have rights as an organisation
Thank you for your work
I’m reading your book right now and loving it
One of the things taught to me as Staff was, if people are leaving in droves, do not look at who left, but who is still there, that’s where you will find the real problem. Wish I could quote it or show it, but I definately remember that.
This stable datum I am sure is buried as the elf doesn’t want anyone to remember that quote.
Not sure where Hubbard covered it. Probably would be in a “Why Finder’ Pac.
I took a College ‘leadership’ class and one of the items covered was being assigned to work in an area with high turnover. You focused up the lines of command to where the turnover stopped and observed what that individual was doing to cause the trouble. Steer clear and disbelieve anything coming from him or her.
And in this case, everybody below the top elf is leaving. The MOST miserable place to work is at the top, right under elf. It indicates the problem is DM. Pretty odvious huh.
Did ja ever think he’s been closing centers down and selling off assets so that he could put together a great big huge bag of cash?
My guess is that he will soon be taking all the cash he can get and putting it into off shore banks and then he will skip off to some country that has no extradition treaty with the USA – just him and his “paramour” whose name is never to be spoken.
I suppose it could be Tom Cruise. But it’s hard to believe TC is gay. Micky Mouse – on the other hand – just screams gay clues. Just look at that poofy hair-do and those fashionable suits and other gay-type clothes.
The man is almost certainly a homosexual – hidden in religious garb. He gives off so many cluesthat it’s almost impossible for him to be a heterosexual. One day, I’m guessing we will all learn the truth. But in the meantime, it’s just time for Mickey to take the money and run!
Homosexual, or asexual?
Enough booze will tamp down any libido.
I’d like to try to answer your question, “Homosexual or asexual?” Unfortunately, I just have no idea. His sexual activities seem to be secret and remain very well hidden. He arranged for his wife to be “disappeared” many years ago and there is very little evidence to suggest just how he has been satisfying his sexual urges since then. Of course, that assumes that he does have sexual urges – but I just have no idea.
I suppose my opinion is that this fellow is an extremely “weird type individual” and when you consider his penchant for beating on people who are much larger than himself (but always in the presence of several security type people to protect him), it’s just very difficult to guess anything about his sexual desires or activities.
Furthermore, I would guess that he is just such a strange person and he lives in an extremely high state of fear and paranoia, there is just no telling how his story will end. But whatever that end may be, I am fairly certain it will involve a huge amount of money that will be hidden away under the protection of off-shore bank accounts.
Finally, I would guess that no matter how his twisted tale will end, he will remain a minor footnote in history – somewhat similar to the Reverand Sun Yung Baboon.
People will remember his name with a twist – perhaps something like the CEO Daveed Missed Cabbage – unless he arranges for some kind of mass slaughter like Jim Jones.
But ain’t it interesting how even Jim Jones is hardly remembered at all in the annals of history. This rat will likely be remembered as a terrible piece of shit. What was his name again?
Thank you for providing addresses, so now I can send them some Aftermath cards 🙂
The broadcast of the South Park episode Trapped In The Closet would have been the perfect moment for COB to take the money and run. But COB may actually been a true believer.
About 1999 I was out photographing area birds when what did I find but the Dallas cherch of Scientology, complete with a lone vehicle in the big parking lot – a yellow van, with a low front tire. It was Sunday, a day off for this strange cherch, so apparently no Sunday services. It was an imposing building in an expensive area just beyond the border of Las Colinas. Though the Dallas cherch claimed to be in the heart of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, in fact it lies in the city of Irving, almost ten miles from downtown Big D and 24 miles from Cowtown. But what’s a little truth-stretching to Scilons, eh? The website says you can “Take the most accurate and reliable personality test” so of course it must be true or they couldn’t put it in writing, right? But I was having too much fun chasing the many birds that found good refuge what with all the trees and power lines and small private lakes, so I left the masses at the cherch to their own devices. Devices, get it?
One can only speculate as to what Hubbard would have done with a changing culture and internet. I’m sure there would have been many “heads on pikes” but I don’t think shrinkage would have been as swift but maybe. One thing Hubbard had was top executives and some pretty smart minds that might have had some ingenuity, innovation or creative thinking to help keep the church of scientology alive a little longer.
Mascavige has resorted to cruelties, abuses, fraud and extortion in his tenure as head of the church – as the ONLY executive in charge – any other creative, intelligent or executive mind he got rid of pretty quickly.
YEs, you are right Mary. I am reading a fascinating book about mind control recommended by a reader. I will publish my full thoughts about it when done and add it to my recommended list of reading if I feel it is something worthwhile — the first chapters deal with the history of “brainwashing” going back to the Inquisition and then to Pavlov and Stalin. The similarities in the tactics (not the murder of millions) of Stalin and Miscavige are startling. Nobody in Stalin’s inner circle survived. Everyone was eventually a “traitor” and had to be “sacrificed” for the “greater good.”
And please include the book Mike. Thanks
I will when I’m done
Ooo. Can’t wait to read your take and see the recommended book.
I occasionally run into people who believe Stalin and Mao did no wrong. Um, I have seen a lot of literature by the likes of Robert Jay Lifton whose work I have used extensively to unweave the web of lies that is Scientology and disentangle myself and I don’t think he discovered the eight criteria for thought reform by accident.
I believe his study of the Chinese brainwashing techniques was genuine and he didn’t coincidentally unlock the methods used by Scientology while making untrue propaganda about benign and misunderstood methods!
I think he studied brainwashing techniques used by the Chinese and Soviets and this resulted in his model.
I have to tell any admirers of communism that the totalitarian states of the Soviet Union and China were never in my opinion free or utopian.
I know that Marxists can say that the governments we have had didn’t fit his description of a dictatorship of the proletariat which he described as the Paris Commune which was not a traditional dictatorship but actually a representative democracy, but the history of Lenin, Marx, Mao and on and on is a nightmare for human rights.
Maybe no one after Marx actually did what he intended but it is not a reason to glorify monsters just because they claimed to follow his ideas while just being the same old tyranny we have had before.
Mary, Hubbard wasn’t good at keeping smart people, and by the end was down to an inner circle of mostly young high school dropouts. I think if Hubbard had lived longer, Scientology might have gone the way of most of the other cults of the same time and same type, some of which were larger but are so long gone they’re almost completely forgotten. Oh, and don’t forget the mess with the IRS he had gotten the CofS into, that was at least said to be an existential threat.
Ironically if not somewhat bizarrely, DM may have been just the mix of fresh blood and ruthlessness to keep an aging cult going. He was for example able to bring the IRS to heel, use practices like disconnection to hold the membership together, and figure out how to wring huge amounts of money out of the “whales” to keep things going.
Re: “Thus we must also take heavy care that our own executives do not do it in any shape or guise as it betrays the whole planet.”
As scientology, in actuality, betrays the whole planet (with its policy and practice of disconnection, human trafficing and fleecing its own flock of every penny under the sun, moon and stars), we, the non- and ex-scientologists of planet Earth demand that every org owned by that cult be closed lickety-split.