what a bunch of cults

It would be remiss of me not to link to the other Scientology story of the week, which is the one about the CoS getting fined the best part of a million dollars by a French court for fraud. The Daily Mash makes the obvious point, though in fact the specific fraud perpetrated here was to do with Scientology's wacky medical treatments and "personality tests" rather than their even wackier supernatural belief system. This follows similar slapdowns in 1997, 1999 and 2002, as Scientology continues to fight for the freedom for religious organisations to run massive unaccountable brainwashing schemes and commit massive fraud. Although they prefer to shorten it to "freedom of religion", generally.