WEAPONIZING WOMEN OR A NOVEL MEANS TO AVOID BEING USED AS A HUMAN TARGET

The use of women and children as human shields during wartime has probably been going on since time immemorial and is certainly a staple of current terrorist practices in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that were not emasculating enough, the countries harboring these cowards regularly condemn the U. S. or Israel for targeting these civilian populations, when in fact the militias who infest their own countries hide in plain sight in villages packed with families and then flee just in time to see the bombs intended for them drop on these pitiable human targets. At times is seems as if we are dealing with a bunch of deranged, gun-toting zombies whose bloodlust and cowardice have shrunken their brains to the size of walnuts.

Experience and time, however, teach us that notions of innocence and ignorance are tightly intertwined. We all know that keeping women ignorant and therefore submissive is an evil waste of human potential. While it hurts to hear of another school burning or acid attack in Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan or Pakistan, most people shrug at the news; after all,what can you expect in countries where the four-legged and two-legged donkeys are almost indistinguishable? As long as a warlord supplies them with a fancy, shiny rocket-propelled weapon fit for shooting down helicopters and assures them of good standing among their rotten-toothed, pajama-clad comrades, what else is there to wish for? The spectacle of these grimy slack-jaws yelling insults to the U.S. and burning our flag to protest the targeted killing of a mass murderer who has also been making their lives a living hell just shows how their individuality has vanished, reducing them to little more than a blob that rolls along mindlessly, killing and incorporating everything in its path.

What hope, then, remains for the women who live in the shadows of these thugs? That they are determined to learn and persevere despite frequent school and polling place bombings shows how much they value education and the right to vote. Their situation reminds me of the plight of European women during the Dark and Middle Ages, with one very important exception: these women, if their families permitted it, could flee the outside world and seek education, shelter, and a life of quiet industry in a convent. This separation from a life of grinding poverty or early death in childbirth advanced a revolutionary change in attitudes about women: far from being merely a submissive, two-legged uterus, women were intelligent human beings who could devote themselves to scholarly pursuits as well as grow their own food as necessary.

Parents living in a tribal region of Afghanistan,for example, who are desperate about providing for a family of daughters could place one or more of them in a fully-funded scholarship program that would also provide room and board in a non-sectarian school where they would get a first-rate education and also learn a trade. A foundation in economics would be an essential part of their education and teaching them how to grow a business using micro loans would be its practical demonstration. Pouring money into programs in villages that are terrorist-controlled hives of death and misery only makes the population resentful and envious because the terrorists steal the aid anyway. They need to learn how to produce honest wealth first. Mark my words: day schools are a start, but building fortresses or rather, walled cities of education and industry to assure that girls and women can use their intellectual gifts simply acknowledges that they really do live in an Islamic version of the Dark Ages and that we have the means to gradually bring light into their lives.

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THE MORAL CENSUS

If you’re an American and don’t live in cave, you have recently received a census form that asks you to categorize yourself according to race and ethnicity. Once this information is tallied by the federal government, funds will be allocated for various projects that need the population information from the census. Thus those who have filled out their forms accurately and sent them in by the April 1st deadline have contributed to the public good, albeit in a passive manner. For a very small percentage of the population, however, letting somebody else decide what to do with your tax dollars based on what color your skin is or where your parents came from disregards the shared humanity of all taxpayers and that brings me to the subject of this posting.

Today the Associated Press reported that a 13-year old Yemeni girl has died of injuries to her genitals resulting from her arranged marriage to a man almost twice her age. The “husband” was detained by the authorities, but what difference will that make? Another victim of pederasty has been horribly killed and the outrage in the West over these innocents doesn’t change the fate of these girls in the Middle East.

A few years ago I read an article in The New York Times about child abuse in an Irish orphanage run by the Catholic Church, which included an unforgettable description of children so starved that they could be seen on the side of the road, their mouths dripping green from the grass they had been eating to quell their hunger pangs. Accounts of the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-nineteenth century are full of these descriptions, but how could they happen 100 years later?

When I spent a few months at the Dallas ISKCON temple in the mid-seventies, I remember a visit by our guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. The gurukula of that era is infamous for the sheer brutality of its child abuse, but what I saw that day was proof that the inhumanity organized religions practice with the excuse that they value the soul over the body is nothing more than a cover for criminal abuse of the powerless. In this case, I vividly remember seeing rows of poorly clothed young children sitting cross-legged on the floor, getting their breakfast porridge served to them on a continuous sheet of waxed paper on the floor, which they proceeded to hungrily eat with their fingers. That this practice was unhygienic in the extreme is obvious, but the worst of it was that our guru walked past this scene and smiled approvingly. These children should have been eating at a table sitting in chairs and served with proper plates and utensils like civilized human beings. My heart breaks at the memory, but I also feel shame at not intervening then and there. Adults who stand by and look with indifference at such abuses to common decency have as much claim to spiritual advancement as a bunch of staring robots.

Not too long afterwards I visited India and spent a few minutes with my guru, after which I noticed that his cook was bringing him a small bowl with what appeared to be frosting. I asked her what it was and she told me that it was a mixture of confectioner’s sugar and butter, in other words, cake frosting. Seeing the astonishment written all over my face, she said that Srila Prabhupada liked it. Problem is, feeding this stuff to an elderly man with diabetes is tantamount to feeding him poison. So what if he liked it? Telling him that it was bad for his health and refusing to give it to him would have been the right thing to do.

Rational people don’t offer harm to others for any reason except self-defense. Today I wonder at the sheer stupidity of religious fanatics who disregard the factor that distinguishes people from the lower animals, namely, our capacity for rational thought. Instead, you hear so much about “surrender,” which is nothing more than erotic terminology applied to a so-called “transcendental” relationship that in reality operates as if the parties are master and slave. Our moral faculties are nothing if they don’t move us to actively pursue virtuous activities and use our best reasoning capabilities to persuade others to respect the dignity of their fellow human beings. If that fails, force is almost always necessary. The man who brutally raped and killed his “wife”—in reality a girl that should have been home playing with her siblings and her little friends—should be executed for his crimes; similarly, the Catholic order that deprived those poor orphans of the barest human necessities should have to pay damages in the millions of dollars to their victim and their families. As for the gurukula abuse, instead of the paltry amounts doled to these victims in the Chapter 11 settlement of a few years ago, the value of the world-wide temples should be included in a recalculation of the award amounts, which should be enough for each victim to buy a house at the very least. Tolerating the continued existence of these miserable cowards is a continuing punishment for all of us.

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HARE KRISHNA & CATHOLIC CHURCH SEXUAL ABUSE CASES: THE CRIME OF STATUTES OF LIMITATION

How would you feel if someone you loved mistakenly entered a train station that was the target of terrorists, was killed, but later on you discovered that someone who suspected that something bad was going to take place fled the station without warning anybody? Was fear the reason, or simply cowardice? Whatever the reason might be, you would probably be furious and hold that person at least partially responsible. Dealing with these feelings in a world where terrorists have proved they can infiltrate our most familiar and trusted places is the topic of this essay.

As the recent bombing of the Moscow train station has taught us, betraying our trust by using the most unexpected terrorists to strike during broad daylight means that the sources of these menaces need to be wiped out first. Furthermore, people who are familiar with these terrorists need to step forward and offer their services. However, getting inside the minds of the offenders is the highest priority because something is rotting them from the inside out. Simply put, victims of discrimination and especially sexual abuse are ripe targets for recruiters who prey on their feelings of dispair. If you offer them a way to avenge themselves while going to what they seem to believe is Paradise, many will take the job offered to them even if it means killing and maiming countless others. True, some of these women bombers, like the "black widows" suspected in the Moscow bombings, have suffered the loss of their husbands and sons in the regional wars in Chechniya and other former Soviet republics, but what about the increase in women bombers in Afghanistan and Iraq?

We are clearly dealing with an atmosphere of mistrust and hopelessness that has a direct connection to the near-impossibility of the victims of domestic and sexual violence to confront their attackers as well as seek compensation for themselves in civil court and prison sentences for their abusers in criminal court. As the recent spate of cases of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy in Ireland and Germany has brought to light, the laws regarding Statues of Limitations for sexual abuse most often sabotage the efforts of these victims and their defenders to get any justice. In the U.S., an effort is being made to abolish the Statue of Limitations in regard to these crimes altogether due to the knowledge that it often takes many years for the victim to recover sufficiently to confront the abuse and seek justice. In Germany there has been talk of extending it to 30 years, but that might even be too little.

Cults and terrorists are allied, but worse yet, the fanaticism that kills is bred by both. Sadly, putting these miscreants in policy making positions has disasterous results (for a graphic description of the child abuse at Hare Krishna Gurukula schools that led to the Windle Turley lawsuit of 2000 please see http://www.harekrsna.org/iskcon-child-abuse.htm). All of the former Gurukula children who were victimized are bound to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to some degree and, if you read their accounts and have recently visited one of the lavish Hare Krishna temples recently, you will have to wonder if there is justice in the universe at all. Moreover, if you see a video of a madrassa and just imagine these students of Islam recruited to blow themselves up, the similarities become distressingly clear.

Well, as the saying goes, a fool is born every minute.

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WIDOWS AND CHILD BRIDES NO MORE: THE INTELLECTUAL RIGHTS OF INDIAN WOMEN

When I was living in Los Angeles in 1979 near the end of my thirteen years with the Hare Krishna cult, one day a devotee friend and I walked into an Indian boutique and, as we looked at the wares, began to commiserate about how we had suffered as the victims of arranged marriages. It was soon apparent that we had been overheard by one of the owners behind the counter, for when we stopped for a moment, we saw that she was looking at us earnestly, while tears coursed down her cheeks. It was one of those rare moments when affinity attracts strangers and reveals a commonality that makes kindred spirits immediately recognize each other. Both of us must have seemed to radiate compassion for this woman and she knew it instantly. Then she told us her story.

“Gulabi Gang” Abusive Husband Beaters

She told us that she, like so many other Indian women, had been pressured into an unwanted marriage, despite her known preference and love for another man. Her brothers insisted that she would disgrace her family if she married the man of her choice, claiming that he was poor and would never be able to provide for her adequately. So she entered into a marriage with a man she did not love and bore his children, all the while faithful in her heart to the man she loved, who, contrary to her brothers’ expectations, became very wealthy. This woman, a devout Muslim, spoke very respectfully of her husband, saying that he was a good father and provider. However, as she said, nothing could erase her grief of having been forced to abandon her hopes to marry the man she loved. Worse, years after the marriage, she confronted her brothers and asked them why they pressured her so relentlessly to give up her true love. They actually had the audacity to say that she should have done what she wanted and that they didn’t feel responsible for what had happened to her.

When I got home that night and thought about what my Muslim sister had confided to us that day, I remembered another even sadder instance of this wearing down of the spirit that I had witnessed years earlier in India.

When I first visited India in 1971, the year after my arranged ISKCON marriage, my husband and I paid a brief visit to his maternal aunt, a widow. She was very gracious and generous: I vividly recall how touched I was when she gave me a beautiful kashmiri shawl in a dark maroon color (it suited my coloring perfectly!). But what struck me most of all about her was her intensely sorrowful face that was accentuated by deep-set, hollow eyes and gaunt patrician features. Once she noticed the compassion that must have been written all over my teenaged face, she began telling me her story.

She too had been pressured into marrying against her will and, to make matters worse, was widowed at a young age without any children. Hindu widows are notoriously ill-treated as a rule and I sensed this in the dismissive way her plight was regarded by my in-laws. The notion that widows are inauspicious and generally a nuisance runs strong in Indian society. When I noted that she looked ill, she told me that she suffered from chronic bronchitis and diarrhea, both the bane of sufferers of extreme emotional distress. It seemed to me nobody cared about her suffering and that my compassion for her plight was a kind of manna in the wilderness of her isolation. Years later I mentioned her to one of my sisters-in-law and was simply told that she had died years earlier.

The plight that these Muslim and Indian women found themselves in was dreadful, but is dwarfed by the monstrosities that we read about everyday: girls “married” before puberty dying or maimed in childbirth by fistulas that literally rip open their birth canals and leave them permanently incontinent unless surgically repaired. That horror that is widespread over the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent, and Africa, is the direct result of immature girls—children themselves—bearing children at an age when most of their Western counterparts are still playing with dolls.

The irony of all these horrors is that Indian women, far from being the stupid, lustful chattel that the swamis of the Hare Krishna movement and others who misinterpret the Vedic literature believe them to be, are celebrated in the West for their high intellect by those fortunate enough to study or work with them in any capacity. This fact alone makes the continued subservience to, and abuse by men of their less fortunate sisters a grave crime to humanity: think of what marvels and discoveries would have been achieved by our lotus-eyed sisters in India had they been given free rein to develop their natural intellectual gifts. Instead, they are often doomed to lives of little more than two-legged wombs peering out of the saris or chadors that only accentuate their anonymity.

I remember my guru, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, describe the womb as little more than the bellows in a blacksmith’s shop, with no function other than to nurture the seed of the real parent, the father. This barbaric and, I might add, willful ignorance of basic biology is characteristic of religions whose claims of “protecting” women is nothing more than a front for men whose actual relationship with their child brides is technically nothing more than the crime of pederasty perpetrated by a repressed, insecure sociopath. It is no small wonder that terrorism has developed strong roots in countries where religion is used as an excuse to crush the intellectual aspirations of women and girls--why else do the Taliban bomb schools for girls in Afghanistan? Those goons would rather rot in endless poverty than acknowledge that this is the 21st century and women everywhere are rising out of the mire of ignorance and prejudice to develop our irrepressible intellectual rights.

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THE ISKCON EXCUSE FACTORY

Imagine using a credit card, spending $10,000 and then telling the collection agency when they call that not only you have no intention of paying, but that they should “just get over it” and “let it go.” What response do you think you would get?

Sadly, the mothers and children of broken ISKCON(International Society for Krishna Consciousness)marriages, along with suffering extreme poverty, abuse and neglect of all kinds, have had their cries for just compensation muffled again and again by ISKCON apologists for the deadbeat husbands and fathers still hiding under the saffron curtain of “renunciation.” Indeed, a sanyasi who “renounces” his family is actually rewarded by being given the honorific title of “goswami,” while the wife and child/children he left to fend for themselves are brushed aside like so much garbage.

If an ISKCON sanyasi is permitted and even glorified for side-stepping his financial obligations to those he solemnly promised both in his temple ceremony and the civil court system to honor, love, and protect “till death do you part,” why do his associates allow it? Greed? Indifference? Misogyny? No, the real reason is COWARDICE, pure & simple. Perhaps sexual repression (and often, perversion) and blind adherence to irrational belief systems have to some extent diminished their manhood and turned them into knee-scrapers and foot-bathing parasites. However, nothing but a kind of all-pervasive spiritual rot has turned them into the bunch of COWARDS who, instead of eagerly promoting the welfare of women and children, act as the enablers of their abusers.

Gentlemen, remember that what really matters isn’t what you say, but what you DO! Going back to my analogy about unpaid credit card debt, most of us know from personal experience that unpaid bills grow and grow, accumulating interest until what you have is a mountain of debt. The same is true of the vast pile of unpaid alimony and child support that ISKCON men, sanyasi or not, have yet to pay, but mistakenly dismiss, thinking that they can dupe others into believing that their “service” has canceled all worldly debts. Sorry to jolt you fools out of your MAYA, but all you owe to your abandoned family is due and payable, and the longer it is withheld, the more interest it accumulates.

Worse, as I detailed below and in my website, criminal acts often accompany the abuse and neglect of former spouses and children, adding exponentially to the debts their abusers already owe. Make no mistake about it, many of these cases will end up in criminal and civil courts, while the more courageous advocates of these women will find other ways to avenge their honor if all else fails. In the meantime, the embassies and judicial administrations of their abuser’s host countries should be advised of the presence of these miscreants within their borders. And MEN OF ISKCON, try behaving like men and stop cowering before and empowering the saffron-skirted deadbeats whose flowery speeches and fundraising prowess cannot conceal that neglecting their responsibilities has pitifully shrunken their manhood into two useless, foul-smelling withered olives.

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CULT DIETARY RESTRICTIONS: THE EXAMPLE OF ISKCON

One of the most laughable and irrational dietary restrictions I had to follow as a Hare Krishna devotee--beyond the prohibition against eating meat, fish, and eggs--involved shunning garlic and onions. We were told that these naturally pungent bulbs grew only in "dirty" conditions and also have a nasty side effect of making one more passionate. I remember blushing violently when I repeated this nonsense to a Sunday feast guest, who immediately told me that I was talking absolute nonsense. He was right of course, but at the time I repeated this irrational garbage like a sari-clad puppet. Truth is, I never really believed in the prohibitions against garlic and onions, particularly after we were told that a good substitution is asafoetida ("hing" and here's where things get really nasty.

For one thing, asafoetida is a sulfurous gum resin that is usable as a spice in tiny amounts and only after it has been browned. Otherwise, it has a fetid and rather disgusting smell, much like a huge trove of rancid gym room sneakers festering in a hot locker room. This was the stuff we used to season much of our soups and vegetables, which only goes to show what lengths people will go to when deprived of their garlic and onions.

However, that's not the worst of it: the sad truth is that no other plant ingredient has a longer history in the preparation of black magic potions than asafoetida (which is one reason it is also known as the "devil's herb"). It also has medicinal properties, though nothing to compare with the health benefits of onions and garlic. The idea that these foods are non-Sattvic is derived from the conception of the three gunas (sattva, rajas, and tamas, representing goodness, passion, and darkness, respectively). These were originally representative of innate qualities and linked to the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva in their capacities as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer (Maitrayaniya Upanishad). Furthermore, the Bhagavad Gita (17:2) treats the three gunas as innate qualities of individuals, which is treated by some commentators--Swami Dayananda Saraswati is a famous example--as proof that the spiritual preceptor, ignoring the caste of the parents, should assign a caste to a student upon completion of gurukula training based on his knowledge of the child's innate qualities.

The link to diet came much later with the concept of the Ayurvedic diet, which advocates foods considered to promote Sattvic qualities and proscribes foods that are considered to encourage lower tendencies. Here we enter into the realm of folklore and magic. It is understandable, given the great antiquity of Vedic culture, but personal experience and reason should step in at this point and assert themselves, for who else can attest to these qualities affecting a person but the man or woman ingesting the food in question? We know for example, that onions are ubiquitous in Indian cooking and that India is the world's leading exporter of onions. If onions and garlic had such debilitating effects on the Indian people, they would have run riot years ago and destroyed themselves in a vast onion and garlic precipitated holocaust.

So much for forsaking garlic and onions; instead of eating these healthful foods, we spent years eating a spice whose use is almost universally regarded as an important part of black magic potions and smells abominable into the bargain. Better eat with your health in mind and judge for yourself what is in your best interests.

Still undecided? Please see: https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com/2016/11/iskcon-and-indignities-rational-look-at.html.

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ISKCON AND THE SIN OF GREED, Pt. 2

Although the whole “Maharani” episode was ridiculous from start to finish, one incident has remained fresh in my memory. It happened on the occasion of a reception I held for Taittiriya (Maharani’s initiated name) and her husband Bali Mardan at our apartment at the corner of Kane and Henry Streets. At the time she sported a fair-sized bulge in her abdomen, which she asserted was a multiple pregnancy. This claim was highly disputed:how could this hag (she could have been anywhere between 40-55, but to me, a 20-year old mother, the thought of anyone her age pregnant or claiming to be pregnant was simply—no pun intended—inconceivable) with her veiny hands and seamed face be slated to become the mother of a bunch of babies? Maybe, I thought, she is wearing a pillow under her sari or has bunched up the part one tucks in to resemble a belly? So, imagine my raised eyebrows when she told me matter-of-factly that our guru Prabhupada told her that the four fetuses she was allegedly carrying were four incarnations of Vishnu, each with four arms. The thought of sixteen arms waving about inside of her was funny beyond words, but I kept a rapt facial expression once I heard that it was Prabhupada who told her that bit of lunacy. Crazily enough, I never doubted the veracity of her account; however, I also knew beyond question that the old bird had been taken for a ride.

Before long it was clear to us that Taittiriya had been initiated by Prabhupada (in Los Angeles in 12/73) and married shortly thereafter by the scheming hypocrite Bali Mardan for the express purpose of getting at her money. Remember, those were the days when ISKCON devotees were ubiquitous in airports, conniving the public into buying literature that was in most cases almost immediately thrown into the trash. So the prospect of tolerating the antics of this shriveled brown monkey--whose effrontery and hauteur were driving most of us into the trees ourselves—was really no big deal. Yet something was profoundly wrong in the monkey house:there were no babies and, you guessed it, no money. How Prabhupada reacted to this state of affairs is clear from his letters. Here’s an excerpt from a letter he wrote to Taittiriya shortly before her ruse was discovered:

I have got very good respect for Japanese people. So far I have met the Japanese boys and girls in our temple here, they are so well behaved that I was astonished that they were more respectful than my direct disciples. (September 15, 1974)

But after it became plain that she was penniless, his reaction was quite different. Here is an excerpt of a letter dated November 28, 1974 that Prabhupada wrote to my spineless ex-“husband” Gopal Krishna in response to letter he wrote acting as if he had discovered Taittireya’s ruse:

She is old, like great grandmother. Because you are a devotee you could not tolerate the nonsense.

In fact, it was only after my continual urging to do something about the scandal at the temple and after the scandal was common knowledge that Gopal—a black-hearted villain if there ever was one—wrote to Prabhupada acting as if the discovery was his. Regardless, you can draw your own conclusions about this account of a cult’s greed and immorality without my pointing out the obvious. One thing is certain: Maharani was clearly an example of one who, to paraphrase Shakespeare, was more sinned against than sinning.

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