The New Yorker has a pretty damaging article about Scientology, ‘The Apostate, Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology’, by Lawrence Wright, which at last, denunciates the weird homophobia obsession and sadistic practices of the famous cult. Paul Haggis is a film director and screenwriter (‘Million Dollar Baby’, ‘Crash’) who went ‘all the way to the top’ in the strict hierarchy of the church, and recently resigned his scientology membership. Any church that pretends to cure your allergies, common cold, to give you heightened powers of intelligence and perception and to diagnose your disease with an E-meter qualifies for plain crazy cult to me, but when the ‘secret documents’ were revealed, I just had to laugh at that B movie science-fiction stuff about despotic Xenu blowing up human beings in volcanoes. Believing into insane fiction is one thing, but human and civil-rights violations is another thing. In this article, serious accusations of beating and abusing treatment conducted by cult absolute leader Miscavige, reports of encouragement to separate members from friends and family who criticize scientology (referred in the church jargon as S. P.s, suppressive persons), stories of children signing billion-year contracts and drafted into the Sea Org (equivalent to Hubbard’s slaves not allowed to have children and paid $50 a week), or sent to Rehabilitation Project Force locations when they have failed to fulfill their responsibilities, are complete different things. This is so damaging for the church I really hope the FBI investigation currently happening as this article is saying, will lead somewhere. Many musicians are into Scientology, and although the cult does not publish lists of its members, it is easy to find out that Beck is a scientologist, as well as Chick Corea, Juliette Lewis, Lisa Marie Presley (whose marriage with Michael Jackson may have been an attempt to bring the king of pop into the cult), Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Nine Inch Nails/Ima Robot), Woody Woodmansey (David Bowie/Spiders From Mars), Billy Sheehan (Mr Big, David Lee Roth, Talas), Tom Constanten (keyboardist for the Grateful Dead), Chaka Khan, Michael Lockwood, Alison Sudol (A Fine Frenzy), Edgar Winter,… and this is without mentioning the ones who were once into the cult and are not part of it anymore like Rob Thomas, Van Morrison, or Leonard Cohen, and the ones who died like Isaac Hayes and Sonny Bono. As Haggis says at the end of this 28-page article, ‘I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don’t know why I couldn’t’, … it’s time for Beck and the others to see it and wake up. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all