Scientology: All fun and games until someone gets killed.

Everyone's laughing at Tom Cruise again. He's so loony. Ha, ha. Scientology is funny. No, it's scary. The blog of a former Scientologist ("Formerly Fooled") notes that three French Scientologists were recently arrested in Italy for allegedly holding a person against her will: "Officers found a 47-year-old woman of Tunisian origin sleeping semi-naked on a mattress infested with vermin. She was subsequently hospitalised."

Formerly Fooled takes this opportunity in his post to remind the public of the death of 36-year-old Lisa McPherson, who died in 1995 after Scientologists impeded her ability to get medical treatment.

The case of Lisa McPherson may be the worst abuse by the Scientologists, but I have read countless stories of intimidation of people perceived to be enemies of the church. For example, I remembered hearing a story about a man who was drugged by a woman who then went into the bedroom, put animal blood all over the place, and then got the police involved in an attempt to frame him for some sort of abuse. After searching a bit, I found it was not just my memory; it is referred to as the Miss Blood Incident. Here is an alleged account of the incident by the victim, Tom Lemesrud, who was allegedly targeted for creating a bulletin board service that helped to spread anti-Scientology information. I invite you to do your own research on this, since I have not had time to verify this story myself.

Miss Blood sounds like a crazy story, perhaps made up, an exaggeration, or just an aberration. Reasonable assessment, except that L. Ron Hubbard created something called the "Fair Game" doctrine (link contains link to a scan of Hubbard's document, as well as ABC news footage). "[Suppressive Person] Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed." Hmm. Destroyed. Sounds a bit worse than say, excommunication.

Scientology is not just another fleeting celebrity fad like Kabbalah, the pickled beet diet, or remaining married. It is a cult, and it's a potentially dangerous one. This is what dogma, isolation from opposing viewpoints, and lack of critical thinking can lead to.

To end on a slightly more light-hearted note, I came across an article explaining some of the jargon used by Tom Cruise in his latest starring role as winner of Scientology's answer to The Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. Another article invokes Godwin's Law by comparing Tom Cruise's speech to that of one made by Goebbels. It very conveniently links to a transcript of the video, with some explanations of what he is talking about. He does sound a little less incoherent when you understand the jargon. But what's more crazy, being incoherent, or being coherent about one's devotion to Scientology?