HARE KRISHNA CULT EXPOSED: Eastern religions

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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 dangerous chemicals.

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.

ISKCON’S “FESTIVAL OF COLORS” PART#3: DOING THE MATH

THE PARTY’S OVER, HOLI MEN

As you might have guessed, the reason why ISKCON engages in such irresponsible behavior is purely financial.

Each year thousands buy tickets, Holi powder bags, meals, and yoga-themed merchandise at each of the multitudes of Festival of Colors venues worldwide. To understand how ISKCON uses these events as multi-million dollar sources of fundraising revenue, look no further than the annual festivities at Spanish Fork, Utah, which tops the list in terms of ticket sales and crowds. For example, while the event organizers expected approximately 10,000 to attend in the past few years, that number can easily balloon to 30,000 by opening day.1

In Utah, this includes, in addition to Spanish Fork, Salt Lake City and Ogden. In California, there are at least six, and many more in major cities nationwide. The list grows exponentially if many major cities around the globe are added to the list, with the slogan of the Festival of Colors event in Sydney, Australia, “Be a Part of the Celebration of the Oneness of Human Spirits” illustrating how ignorance and group hysteria remain powerful tools of duping people out of their money and health.

Those “bliss” peddling snake oil merchants are overdue for a legal reckoning to compensate the thousands of people who have attended their Festival of Colors yoga-themed extravaganzas.

After the dust settles—no pun intended!—and you have contacted the personal injury law firm of your choice, the next step is having them contact the Department of Public Works (DPW) where you attended the Festival of Colors party. The primary function of this branch of local government is determining whether the group wishing to obtain a “Mass Gathering Permit” meets the municipality’s health department regulations. These details must be included in each and every Event Permit Application. For example:

Utah County Public Works

Phone: (801) 851-8600

Fax: (801) 851-8612

chrissa@utahcounty.gov or jamie@utahcounty.gov

It will be up to your attorney to ascertain to what extent the department of works in your municipality was negligent in issuing event permits to the Festival of Colors organizers. You are also free to contact a number of these public works offices on your own or as a group of your associates you might organize on the social media account of your choice.

However, you can be sure that since they clearly failed to conduct due diligence regarding the glaring threat to public health posed by the Festival of Colors, the DPW will be eager to investigate the oversight and take corrective action. In due course the Hare Krishna /ISKCON organizers will face scrutiny like never before and be forced to drop the “peace and love” mask they have hidden behind for more than a half-century.

CONCLUSION

The philanthropic smokescreen cults use to hide their fundraising operations often relies on selling to the unsuspecting public ancient traditions and rituals packaged to suit modern sensibilities. Hare Krishna followers made a memorable nuisance of themselves back in the hippie era of the sixties and seventies hawking their guru’s books in airports and the streets. Back then, users of psychedelic drugs with their fluorescent tie-dye attire flocked to the Hare Krishna outdoor events, where group chanting and gobbling up free vegetarian food was used to entice them to join up and waste precious years of their youth promulgating nonsense.

Today the approach has changed but the rationale has become a great deal more opportunistic and cynical. Instead of their mind-numbing chanting, those smug “better than Hindu” hypocrites who used to parade about in saffron robes wringing their hands over the evils of rampant materialism have mastered the practice themselves. Distorting the traditions of the Holi festival in India and the Indian diaspora by serving it up as a New Age springtime festival is bad enough. Worse, however, is dousing their guests (and encouraging them to apply it to other’s faces) with a powder I have shown in this posting is a fluorescent mixture of minerals in a cornstarch base that no one in their right mind would think of inhaling. Yet, sadly, that has been the case many thousands of times.

Readers of this blog from all over the globe—yes, ISKCON, it’s really a globe!—should feel relief that the whirlwind of karmic retribution has finally caught up with those jokers, who, if they have a drop of self-preservation in their veins, will immediately stop making clowns at their un”Holi” parties and stop abusing the public’s trust in the scientific method.

For Jamie 🪷🌈🙏🏻

1. Using the more conservative figure (10,000), if each attendee pays $7 for admission and purchases only one bag of Holi powder for $3, the total would be $100k; if they each bought five bags for $12, it would total $190k, and if ten bags the total would be $290k. If 30,000 attend, the Hare Krishna organizers can expect to be flush with half a million—500k!—in profits with minimal overhead. Add to that prices for meals and the purchase of such merchandise as Ganesh and OM t-shirts, etc. Not bad, you say? Keep in mind that ISKCON has 88 temples and ashrams in the USA, and holds annual Festival of Color events in most of them. And those are just the revenue streams for the Festival of Colors USA operations! Do the math.

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. . .

[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.”

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

ISKCON’S “FESTIVAL OF COLORS” PART#3: DOING THE MATH

SAINTS OR SWINDLERS? ISKCON’S LATEST RECRUITMENT TACTICS