Tom Cruise, Cults, Germany

Thomas wrote:

.... but the state can prefer religion over irreligion, and even (within limits) some kinds of churches over other kinds of churches.

But this only due to treaties/concordats (re "one chucrh above the other").

edgarblythe wrote:

(I consider it a religion, at least for him, if he totally believes it, regardless of the origin and some of the practices. No different in essence from the origins of other religious beliefs, no more fantastic).

To me, this is the crux of the biscuit. Scientology is no loonier than any of the imaginary friend superstitions, and if the leadership are trying to milk the public, the most that can be said is that they exhibit more honesty and zeal about their desire to control the "flock" to their own advantage.

Yeah, well, i already mentioned that they're better at "fleecing the flock" (hehehehe . . . i crack me up) than yer garden-variety bible thumpers and Muslim holy warriors.

Along the same lines: would you be upset if a film crew was to shoot a movie about, say, the Civil War, on location in the White House, and was banned from it because the main actor was a public spokesperson for the KKK? Would you think that it was the government's right to make that kind of decision, or would you think that it was discriminatory of the KKK?

A better analogy might be if the KKK were to petition to make a movie on location at, say Gettysburg (the White House would be off limits due to national security concerns, etc.). If the government had allowed others to film there, they'd be hardpressed to deny the KKK even if "the main actor was a spokesperson for the KKK".

A better analogy might be if the KKK were to petition to make a movie on location at, say Gettysburg (the White House would be off limits due to national security concerns, etc.).

HokieBird wrote:

A better analogy might be if the KKK were to petition to make a movie on location at, say Gettysburg (the White House would be off limits due to national security concerns, etc.).

Gettysburg is not a good analogy. The White House is. The Pentagon might be even better.

ehBeth wrote:

HokieBird wrote:

A better analogy might be if the KKK were to petition to make a movie on location at, say Gettysburg (the White House would be off limits due to national security concerns, etc.).

Gettysburg is not a good analogy. The White House is. The Pentagon might be even better.

Ah, good point! And it would have to be a foreign group widely considered as a cult in the United States...

So, let's say a film team - with a widely known actor who happens to be a prominent Aum Shinrikyo member - is planning to shoot a movie in the Pentagon. The US government politely declines. Would that be discrimination?

old europe wrote:

ehBeth wrote:

HokieBird wrote:

A better analogy might be if the KKK were to petition to make a movie on location at, say Gettysburg (the White House would be off limits due to national security concerns, etc.).

Gettysburg is not a good analogy. The White House is. The Pentagon might be even better.

Ah, good point! And it would have to be a foreign group widely considered as a cult in the United States...

So, let's say a film team - with a widely known actor who happens to be a prominent Aum Shinrikyo member - is planning to shoot a movie in the Pentagon. The US government politely declines. Would that be discrimination?

Let me repeat myself. We believe that freedom of speech would be meaningless if we allowed the government to pick and choose to whom it should apply.

That's just us, though.

1. Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing, and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
   
   
2. These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honor.
   
   
3. Art and scholarship, research, and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution.

Germany 1, Scientology 0

Emine Saner
Wednesday June 27, 2007
The Guardian

The German government has banned the makers of a film about a failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler from shooting in the country because its lead is Tom Cruise. And Cruise, as he has ensured everyone knows, is a Scientologist. "[The ban] is a good thing," says Antje Blumenthal, a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician who has campaigned against Scientology in Germany. "I don't like that whenever Tom Cruise is written about, it always says he is a Scientologist. I am concerned it could encourage young people to join."

There has been a history of animosity between Germany and the Church of Scientology. The government makes no secret of the fact that it views the organisation, which was founded by sci-fi writer L Ron Hubbard, as a money-making cult rather than a religion, and has denied it tax exemption. Some politicians have called for it to be banned and for Scientologists to be barred from the civil service.

In 1993, a performance by the jazz musician and Scientologist Chick Corea was cancelled after the state withdrew sponsorship, and the youth wing of the CDU staged a boycott of Cruise's film Mission: Impossible in 1997. Cruise, and a number of his Hollywood friends, signed an open letter to the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl about Germany's "persecution" of Scientologists. "In the 1930s, it was the Jews. Today it is the Scientologists," it said.

Earlier this year, Scientologists opened a new church in Berlin, minutes from the Reichstag, which should make monitoring of the organisation easy. (Scientologists are still under covert surveillance in several states in Germany.) And in March, one state governor called on a German TV show to drop an appearance by Scientologist John Travolta. "I think because Scientology has so many tricks up its sleeve, it is very difficult to protect individual people or institutions," Ursula Caberta, head of the Scientology Task Force in Hamburg, said in an interview earlier this year. "We have to ban it, at some point."

Germany Flip-Flops on Cruise-Film

Scientology Hinders Tom Cruise's Latest Film
Hollywood Star Faces a Possible Ban on Filming in Germany Because of Religious Views

Cruise is banned from second Berlin location

By Tony Paterson in Berlin
Published: 04 July 2007
Germany has thwarted Tom Cruise's plan to make a film about the Second World War plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler for a second time in a move that provoked angry protests from the country's current Oscar-winning director.

Berlin police refused yesterday to allow the actor and controversial Church of Scientology member to use a police station in the city's Kreuzberg district to shoot his film, Valkyrie, in which he plays Claus von Stauffenberg, a member of the German nobility who tried to kill Hitler in 1944.

A police statement said the presence of a film crew on the site would hamper the activities of police "so seriously" that permission to use the station as a location could not be granted.

It was the second time that Cruise was refused permission to use a Berlin location to shoot his film. Last week, the German Defence Ministry banned the actor from setting foot on key military sites in the German capital that were to have featured in the production. The ministry said the actor's membership of the Church of Scientology was the reason behind the ban, and insisted that the makers of the film would not be allowed on its premises "if Count von Stauffenberg is played by Tom Cruise, who has publicly professed to being a member of the Scientology cult".

Germany's attempts to thwart Cruise were angrily criticised yesterday by Florian Henckel von Donnersmark, the Oscar-winning German director of the film Other People's Lives, which graphically depicts the spying techniques of the Stasi, the former secret police force in Communist East Germany.

Writing in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, Von Donnersmarck said Cruise's role as Stauffenberg would "improve Germany's international image more than 10 World Cup football tournaments". He added: "The biggest star of the (Second World War) victor nations is not good enough to play our superman Stauffenberg, if this star's convictions are not exactly in line with those of Germany."

Germany treats Scientology with suspicion and keeps it under surveillance. MPs have stated publicly that, although it is not banned, they regard the organisation as a cult which recruits impressionable young people and is bent on making money.

Antje Blumethal, a German conservative, defended the ban yesterday, saying: "If we had given permission to film to a leading Scientologist it would have amounted to official recognition for the sect."

Cruise's production company has protested and maintains that the actor is ideally suited to play Stauffenberg, a wartime army officer who became a hero in post-war Germany for attempting to assassinate Hitler with a suitcase bomb. The Nazi leader was wounded but survived and Stauffenberg was shot dead by firing squad shortly after the plot was uncovered.

The ban on Cruise has met with incomprehension in the United States. The Philadelphia Daily News was reported in Germany to have remarked in an editorial yesterday: "It would be difficult to find a better way of recalling the Nazi era than by preventing a man from doing his job because of his beliefs."

"I'm [Berthold Von Stauffenberg] not saying Cruise is a bad actor, I cannot judge that, but he should keep his hands off my father."