ISKCON’S “ FESTIVAL OF COLORS” PART #2: LEGAL NIGHTMARE

FESTIVAL OF COLORS GETS A WAKE-UP CALL. . .

In the United States, evidence that people have been exposed to toxins poisoning the air, drinking water, as well as minerals used for personal care products has led to an ongoing explosion of civil lawsuits.

Personal injury law firms have had tremendous success representing victims whose cancers they claim are attributable to both negligence and indifference to public health. In many cases, appeals of jury awards require adjudication by state and federal court systems, particularly when bankruptcy is used as a means to dodge or reduce liability. Here are a few notable examples:

• Hurley, Lawrence, “U.S. Supreme Court Rebuffs J&J Appeal Over $2 Billion Baby Powder Judgment.” 1 June 2021. Reuters.com. [Stung by the Missouri Court of Appeals’ refusal to overturn $2.12 billion jury award to 22 women, J&J made a last ditch attempt to have it overturned by the higher court.]

  
  

• Friedman, Lisa and Vivian Giang, “3M Reaches $10.3 Billion Settlement in ‘Forever Chemicals’ Suit.” 22 June 2023. The New York Times. [Payout to cover testing and remediation efforts by U.S. municipalities over 13 years. Settlement has no bearing on thousands of lawsuits.]

  
  

• “Levy Konigsberg Files 116 Mesothelioma Suits Against J& J Spinoff Kenvue,” 16 June 2023. Levylaw.com. [This lawsuit is especially relevant since it involves a corporate spinoff designed to insulate J&J in case its bankruptcy maneuvers fail.]

  
  

What Johnson and Johnson (“J&J”)—a trusted household name in America and abroad—has endured due to the presence of asbestos in its famous baby powder is a test case for what happens when the profit motive overwhelms common sense.

This pharmaceutical giant has bitter experience in this regard. By 2023, this venerable American institution paid billions in punitive and compensatory damages to settle at least 52,000 claims asserting that its famed line of talcum powders contained asbestos (which causes ovarian cancer as well as the fatal lung cancer mesothelioma).

Keep in mind that J&J was sued by claimants who showed proof that they suffered from cancers they said resulted from using its talc-based products as infants or later on. No proof of purchase has ever been required. Jury trials have awarded huge amounts after hearing claimant accounts of their medically diagnosed illnesses and also in knowledge of J&J’s concealing the asbestos menace.

The Festival of Colors organizers, on the other hand, have posted thousands of images of its guests in many venues domestically and internationally as promotional materials on the Internet. It is obvious that massive amounts of “Holi” powders imported from India coated their guests and were inevitably inhaled. The chemical pollution issue from the toxic chemicals in these powders has been extremely well-documented in peer-reviewed scientific journals as well as numerous newspaper articles. 

In addition, the many lawsuits filed during the decades after the September 11, 2001 tragedy have shown that lung damage caused by breathing airborne pollutants laced with lethal toxins can take years to develop into mesothelioma and other cancers. 

These facts have given future claimants of the Festival of Colors lawsuits a distinct advantage over their J&J counterparts because their contact with the toxin-laced Holi dust has been thoroughly documented by the festival organizers themselves. 

Furthermore, the requirement to show proof of suffering any medically diagnosed illnesses acquired as a result is a moot point in light of the long exposure timing issues legal experts have encountered when dealing with toxic pollutant lawsuits involving air and water contamination. In other words, no matter when and how you were exposed to chemicals with potentially harmful and/or fatal toxic properties through inhaling, ingesting or any other means, the corporations or organizations responsible remain culpable indefinitely.

Instead of treating their guests simply as a throng of pleasure-seekers eager to part with their money, the promoters will shortly find themselves besieged by lawyers seeking to collect millions in punitive and compensatory damages for claimants exposed to

Since most claimants will seek class action status to expedite their claims and can provide irrefutable evidence to substantiate them, the Festival of Colors organizers will be in a much worse position than others accused of exposing people to hazardous substances.

In recent years such environmental toxic tort settlements have resulted in multi-million dollar payments to claimants from companies otherwise known for their rigid product safety measures and consumer loyalty.

Furthermore, the ongoing exposure assessments used in civil lawsuits to evaluate multimillion dollar environmental toxic tort settlements have been rendered unnecessary by the mountain of photographic evidence that the festival’s organizers have used for promotional purposes. This fact will expedite the claims process for the multitudes whose cases will keep personal injury law firms occupied for years to come.

Notes

1. Virtually all of the civil lawsuits against J&J have been based on adult claimants’ allegations that its talcum baby powders were the source of the mesothelioma and ovarian cancers they developed after years of using the product for personal hygiene purposes. However, in 2018 a Reuters investigative report exposed J&J’s knowledge of asbestos contamination in its talc products tracing back decades. Tests from different labs found asbestos in Its talc from 1971 to the early 2000s, and the company failed to report the findings to the U.S.# Food and Drug Administration. Although J&J insisted that scientists have found no correlation between use of its talc-based products and cancer, juries have overwhelmingly rejected its findings and ruled in favor of the claimants without requiring proof that any of them actually used Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder. The sheer number of such lawsuits (currently 52,000 with many more in the pipeline) led J & J to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection twice (in an obvious effort to sidestep additional jury trials). 

For a concise summary of the history of the Johnson & Johnson asbestos issue and lawsuits, please see:

Whitmer, Michelle. "Johnson & Johnson." Asbestos.com, 24 Jan 2024, https://www.asbestos.com/companies/johnson-johnson/.

Knauth, Dietrich. “J & J Effort to Resolve Talc Lawsuits in Bankruptcy Fails a Second Time.” Reuters.com. 31 July 2023. 5 Sept. 2023,

<https://www.reuters.com/legal/jj-effort-resolve-talc-lawsuits-bankruptcy-fails-second-time-2023-07-28. 

2. Although J&J has consistently upheld the safety of its talc-based products, scientific analyses have long since definitively shown that the mines from which it is extracted are naturally contaminated by asbestos. J&J was aware of this fact from 1957, but continued to sell them in the USA and Canada until, under pressure from a mountain of ongoing litigation, it finally ceased production altogether in 2020.

 

3. For example , in 2021 two lawsuits awarded two municipalities settlements of nearly $90 million in damages for the presence of polyfluoroalkyal (PFOA) in water in upstate New York. And these are only the tip of the iceberg. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry of the Department of Health and Human Services (CDC/ATSDR) is currently conducting exposure assessments by enlisting the voluntary cooperation of people living in areas around the U.S. known to be contaminated by PFOA in the soil and water (all attributed to nearby U.S. military operations). It is also conducting a thorough governmental and legal examination of regulatory issues dealing with the knowledge that various branches of the U.S. government had in allowing the PFOA contamination to continue unabated for decades.

 Disclaimer: Nothing in this blog essay is meant as a substitute for professional legal advice. If you wish to proceed with any claims against the Festival of Colors organization either as an individual or as part of a class action settlement, it would be prudent to contact a reputable personal injury law firm in your area. Although I stand by the research findings in this essay, all of it and much more can be obtained using the services of any competent paralegal.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This essay and all of the charts and illustrations were prepared by and are the exclusive property of the blog author. Using any part of them in any manner, in print or online, is strictly forbidden. A standard link to this blog is a better alternative.

. 

SAINTS OR SWINDLERS? ISKCON’S LATEST RECRUITMENT TACTICS

Why is the Hare Krishna (ISKCON) sect so hell-bent on convincing the Indian public that they are genuine Hindus while spending millions convincing non-Hindus that they are simply “peace and love” yoga enthusiasts?

ISKCON spares no expense in catering to wealthy Hindus as it strives to build its reputation as a genuine branch of mainstream Hinduism. All of these efforts have one thing in common: they are nothing more than self-serving propaganda. Money, as usual, talks. If the cult builds another massive temple and continues its well-publicized food relief programs in India, it expects the Hindu public to follow its lead like a pack of blinkered horses.[i]

However, its sordid past—including child abuse, scams to defraud the public, and its founder’s sexist and racist statements—has proved difficult to hide. 

In a desperate attempt to replenish its dwindling numbers among non-Hindus in western countries, ISKCON has revamped its old policy of withholding information about its real beliefs and practices. Now the cult uses social media sites to ensnare new members by positioning itself as another of the meditation and yoga groups offering therapeutic emotional and health benefits. This watered-down appropriation of Hindu religious practices reduces an ancient faith to another “feel-good” experience much like meditation and hatha yoga have been served up to non-Hindus everywhere.

Recently I discovered the latest recruitment efforts by the Hare Krishna cult in the offerings of Meetup.com, a website that hosts software by a multitude of personal and professional groups and caters to adults seeking new friends with common interests. Nothing about the tactics ISKCON uses to attract new members surprises me, but the sheer nonsense in the groups I found was both sad and laughable. History does indeed repeat itself, as anyone familiar with the hippie movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s can see in the descriptions listed below:

• Enchant Mantra Meditation/Vancover
• Sacred Sounds Outside OM/Las Vegas “Tribe Kin”
• Living Well, Being Well/El Paso, TX
• Vedic Astrology, Karma, Dharma/North York, ON

In each case (and there are many more of these ISKCON sponsored groups all over North America and Europe), it’s clear that participants generally have no idea that the meetings they attend are organized by the Hare Krishna cult, nor do they know anything about its beliefs and history. Rather, as anyone who looks at the photographs included in each meeting can see, ISKCON has cleverly disguised itself as one of the multitude of yoga and meditation practitioners familiar to the general public.[iii]

Back in the 1960’s when ISKCON first attracted hippies to its outdoor kirtans and Sunday Feasts, the main lure used to reel in unsuspecting recruits was a mixture of mantra chanting and free vegetarian food, all of which supposedly granted the practitioner easy and instant access to the Godhead.[iv]

Today, these pleasure-seekers appear to have travelled in a time machine to the present, mixing with a new generation of gullible souls eager to delve in whatever variety of Eastern mysticism offers outsize benefits in proportion to the effort involved.

Now it’s fashionable among youth and their college professors to stridently endorse ecological concerns, along with the usual calls for ending discrimination based on sex, race, and gender. They are the tree-huggers of my generation on steroids. Science, in their twisted worldview, takes a back seat to misplaced sentimentality.

Cults have long since seized the opportunity to worm their way into this void, replacing scientific, objective inquiry with so-called authoritative statements, all ultimately non-refutable because of their ancient “Vedic” sources. So you have “Vedic Astrology” instead of the science of astronomy and the fuzzy, warm-sounding “Living well, Being Well.” Abusing the lonely souls who join Meetingup.com groups with a lot of half-baked pseudo-Hindu mysticism is a familiar practice of the Hare Krishna cultists.

For example, this past summer, ISKCON entered a local festival in the New York City Metro Area City of Newburgh, entitled “Colorfest,’ which in actuality mimics the Hindu festival of Holi, this past spring celebrated by Hindus (and Sikhs also) world-wide on March 2^nd. Its association with the Krishna legend is well-known, of course, and some describe it as “the Festival of Colors.” However, ISKCON takes it entirely out of context, as you can see for yourself with the psycho-babble title and activities of its program months after the official Holi celebration:

http://www.newburghilluminatedfestival.com/colorfest. “A Playful Festival to Strengthen Friends and Families with Happiness.” (Please note: this site has subsequently been shutdown.)

Pure, unadulterated bullshit! “Strengthen Friends and Families with Happiness”? What a nonsensical, illogical statement! If you or anyone you know has actual experience with the Hare Krishna devotees, you know that its mission is quite the opposite: while its members appear so welcoming at first, before long they urge you to give your time and money to them, with no consideration of how your actions affect your family and friends.

Worse, even the “colorfest” title is an effort to hide its true identity within the many groups in the U.S. sponsored by colorfest.org., an arts & crafts organization with no ties to ISKCON. In actuality, the website cult uses to advertise their color-chalk throwing events is https://www.festivalofcolorsusa.com, which bills itself as the “World’s Happiest Transformational Event.” These cheap diversionary tactics distort Hinduism in an attempt to lure in throngs of pleasure-seeking suckers.

This pattern of initially “love bombing” new recruits and then training them (by hours of chanting the same mantra on prayer beads and singing it with others during morning and evening services) to disassociate themselves from the “material world” or “karmi life” is ISKCON’s variant of a practice followed by many cults worldwide.[v]

In addition, let’s be absolutely frank: how can tossing colored chalk at another person do anything other than reduce an adult to the level of a toddler who plays in sand at a neighborhood playground and tosses some of it at his or her playmates? Without the cultural and religious significance Holi has to Hindus, the tossing of colored chalk at a neighborhood festival or any other venue is an insulting, irrational act of cultural appropriation. However, if you think that ISKCON cannot degrade Hinduism any further, you are sadly mistaken. . .

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS ESSAY CAN BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORMAT WITHOUT THE WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE AUTHOR

---

[i] ISKCON has worked overtime in the Europe and India positioning itself as Hindu adherents of the Gaudiya Vaishnava sect. It founded the Hindu umbrella organizations of Hindu Forum Britain (http://www.hfb.org.uk) and Hindu Forum Europe (http://hinduforum.eu) to convince the academic and business communities of its authenticity as well as to advance its Radha Krishna worship and philosophy.

[ii] Since its founding in the mid-sixties, critics of the Hare Krishna/ISKCON cult have produced a mountain of anecdotal evidence of its massive and persistence abuses of its members, particularly women and children. Most of this abuse was and is a by-product of the views of the founder of the cult, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. My blog essays here and in its sister blog, https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com, summarize much of this tragic history and contain verifiable documentation to support my views. For starters, please visit: https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2015/08/new-eastern-cults-as-incubators-of.html and https://harekrishnacultexposed.blogspot.com/2017/12/new-sex-starvd-idiots-slaves-how.html.

[iii] https://www.meetup.com/Newburgh-Yoga-Meetup/photos. Nimai’s Bliss Kitchen 94 S. Robinson    Avenue, Newburgh, NY 12550. This restaurant is another instance of the Hare Krishna movement’s efforts to hide itself in the popular cultural norms of the current ecological trends: it’s a vegan restaurant offering Indian foods without the milk products that are an integral part of the Hare Krishna cuisine.

[iv] See my essay:  https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-hare-krishna-bliss-addiction.html.

[v] The term “lovebombing” was invented by the followers of the Rev. Moon, also known as “the Moonies.”

THE ANTI-ISKCON TIME MACHINE

If you suddenly had access to a time machine, where would you go? What would you do? I know I speak for many readers of my blogs when I say that I would go back to the first time I encountered the ISKCON (Hare Krishna) devotees and observe one of them preaching to a much younger version of myself. To see my face--I was just 14!--glowing with hope and wonder as I was subjected to a carefully scripted indoctrination process would be heart-breaking. Still, I know I (from the future) would never hesitate to confront the devotee and demolish each and every of the Hare Krishna cult’s repugnant and laughable beliefs.That would have been true enlightenment!I only wish someone had had the courage and knowledge to warn me and so many others. Today, that is my mission.



My blogs exist to supply the information the cult leaves out of their so-called preaching and to empower each and every one of you in the here and now.  If you hesitate, the friends or relatives you might otherwise have rescued from these pseudo-Hindu fanatics will waste their lives chasing laughable delusions and eventually find themselves wishing but unable to undo the past. Behind the promises of easy attainment of heavenly reward lies a trash heap of bigotry and pseudo-scientific nonsense most newcomers are kept from encountering until it is too late.

It has been a lonely road writing these essays for my blog during the past eleven years, but the thousands of readers from all over the world who visit it each month have convinced me that my task is worthy. I know these essays have changed lives and saved many families from losing a son or daughter to a cult that will alienate them. If I have helped save even one person from such a fate, my life is a success, no matter how much I have personally suffered.

Finally, a word for those who have escaped from ISKCON or another cult and find yourselves struggling to make up for lost time with family and friends. The time for apologies or trying to ingratiate yourselves with people who might have given up on you years ago is over. Stop blaming yourselves or beating yourselves up for having wasting so many precious years. Youthful idealism is not a crime. Waking up from your delusions is a personal victory, one you will savor more and more as time goes on. Instead of lamenting, re-discover your unique talents and regain your self-esteem by making a MISSION of your own design and one you feel restores your place in the universe. If no one else believes in you, I do.

  

* SEE: https:///2015/08/new-rape-and-insults-wife-abuse-iskcon.html.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this essay can be reproduced in any medium without the express written consent of the author.

ISLAMIC TRIBALISM, CONVERTS, AND TERROR: THE CASE OF RUSSIA

Converts to radical Islam be forewarned: As the bomber suspected of killing 35 and injuring 180 at Domodedovo airport in Moscow January 24th demonstrated, this kind of religious rebirth might require your own death. We can endlessly speculate about why Vitaly Razdobudko, a 32 year old ethnic Russian convert to Islam and resident of the southern Russian city of Stavropol, allegedly chose to act on what appears to be the behest of Islamic separatists from the North Caucasus. Frankly, rolling a rock up a hill perpetually would be more productive. Finding the root cause is much simpler, but, unfortunately, its roots are invasive and deep.

Go to any non-Arab country where Islamic terrorists convert some of local populace for the purposes of inciting violence and you will find that these radicalized converts are described as “Arab militias,” as if a switch of religion is also one of ethnicity. As I discussed at length in my post, “Artificial Ethnicities,” no change of religion can change who you are, that is, what you are ethnically (Arab, Kurd, Hispanic, etc.). For example, the so-called Arab militias in Africa who are generally engaged in a genocidal war against their non-Muslim countrymen have an obvious motive: in their barbaric ignorance, they have come to believe that these murders will lead the true Arab Islamic terrorists who are their puppet-masters to regard them as one of their own, thus, for all practical purposes, transforming them from black to brown. In the case of Arab ethnicity as in any other, you are born into your group and the particulars of its identity form you, be they language, food, dress, customs, etc. Converting to Islam to escape from your own ethnicity and forge a new identity with a foreign people is therefore nothing more than a self-serving delusion.

Moreover, it also contains the seeds of a death wish and the Arab terrorists who prey on these gullible converts know it. What better way to prove your fidelity to your new brethren than to kill yourself on a mission of jihad and prove once and for all that you are truly one of them? As you underwent a form of dehumanization when you repudiated your own countrymen when you converted to radical Islam, why not dehumanize your victims as you treat them as the faceless pawns of the government you seek to overthrow or browbeat?

In the case of Russia, the problem goes even deeper: it is still dealing with the aftermath of suppression of all religious expression during the Soviet years and, after having opened the floodgates, has found that many utterly foreign undesirables also crept in, on the prowl for the spiritually adventurous. Cults such as the Hare Krishnas and the Scientologists have strongholds in Russia and that fact roils and disgusts the Islamic groups throughout the country and its far-flung regions. Create a climate where these groups can take hold and you also create a pretext for people who will do anything to uproot them. The intrusion of religious fanatics from another countries might seem a minor annoyance to the larger terrorist groups based in remote Russian territories, but their competition for would-be fanatics does not go unnoticed.

Orthodox Christianity and moderate Islam are the indigenous religions of the peoples of the former Soviet Union. It is in the interests of the Russian government to promote a strong sense of nationality among all of its peoples, regardless of their religions and ethnic affiliations. Closing the doors to cults and other promoters of chaos and disunion is a step in the right direction.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED