Drastic action by Xenu

When one imagines the sort of dangers that journalists in war zones face daily, it seems rather feeble of John Sweeney—who had at one time reported from Bosnia—to have a screaming fit merely because he was being shouted down by a nasty-looking Scientology spokesman and had been harassed and spied on by the organisation. However much contact with Scientologists may make your flesh creep, it’s not quite like having people with guns trying to kill you.

Of course we should all have some respect for the sincerely held beliefs of Tom Cruise, John Travolta and, according to the Church of Scientology, 120,000 people in this country, or at least make an effort to understand them before writing them off as inane drivel. So here is exactly what they believe; these are the astonishing facts revealed to the world by a science fiction writer called L Ron Hubbard in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1952:

75 million years ago an evil galactic war-lord called Xenu rounded up 13.5 trillion beings from an overpopulated corner of the galaxy, dumped them on volcanoes on Earth, then vaporised them with nuclear bombs. Their radioactive souls, or thetans, later attached themselves to human beings and are at the root of our personal and global problems today.

By whom these truths were revealed to Ron is not clear; I find it hard to see why Xenu himself would have confessed all in Phoenix, AZ, after waiting 75 million years, but then what do I know about the motivations of evil galactic warlords?

Anyway, there it is. If you want to know more about all this, further information is freely available from Scientology HQ. Well, perhaps not quite freely; I gather that fees may be payable if you are really curious.