NEW WEBSITE: "THE ISKCON CULT UNVEILED" IS ONLINE!!!

After more than a year in development, my new website, "The ISKCON Cult Unveiled" at https://iskconcultunveiled.blogspot.com is finally online. It will definitively reveal, for once and for all, how an irrational, deadly idealogy subverts normal ties to family and country.

The evidence to support this claim will be directly taken from the letters and other published writings of the founder of the Hare Krishna cult, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami ( also known as "Prabhupada"). For example, what follows is a transcription of an especially damning series of comments about this guru's views about women. (Please note: Trivikrama was a disciple of the swami and Dr. Patel was an early Indian admirer of the cult.)

Morning Walk, 9 January, 1977, Mumbai

Prabhupada: I condemn everyone, that “You are all dogs and hogs.” And United Nations a pack of dogs barking. That’s a fact. And in Chicago I said, all women, “You cannot have freedom. You have got only thirty-four-ounce brain, and man has got sixty-four-ounce.” I told them. So I became a subject of very great criticism.

Trivikrama: Women’s liberation.

Prabhupada: I denied, “No, you cannot have.” I told them. One girl in the airship, she was seeing like (makes some gesture-laughter). I asked her, “Give me 7-Up.” “It is locked now.” So I frankly said that “No, no. You cannot have equal rights because your brain is thirty-four ounce.” Actually that’s a fact. Where is woman philosopher, mathematician, scientist? Not a single.

Dr. Patel: Apart from that, I mean, they are made for a particular mission.

Prabhupada: How they can have equal rights? Up to date in the history there is not a single woman who is a great scientist or great philosopher or great…

Dr. Patel: Madame Curie was a…

Prabhupada: All bogus. (laughter)

Dr. Patel: You are getting too harsh on them because…

Prabhupada: No, no. How can I give you equal rights, because your brain is less substance.

Dr. Patel: We cannot degrade our mothers that way.

Prabhupada: It is not degrading. It is accepting the actual fact.

These statements are outrageously ignorant and complacent, but, worse, were accepted by legions of Western ISKCON disciples who should have immediately corrected the swami with the truth. Brainwashing, however, had succeeded in perverting the minds and actions of many young people who simply wasted their lives (and ruined many others) in the pursuit of an exotic delusion.

Comments and explanations will be included, but the purpose of this new website is for the damning information to speak for itself. It will hide nothing and, as such, its contents will be sensationalist in the best sense of the term. For example:

• An original essay, "The Guru-Faking Business," which will offer an introduction and concise history of the descent of the ISKCON cult into the mire of criminal abuse;
• It will also guide the reader to easily obtainable sources where the Swami's support of racism, child abuse, and the mistreatment of women are unmistakeable;
• A handy resource for people to want to extricate a family member or friend from ISKCON (or any other cult) and need to familiarize themselves with the persuasive means that ensnare vulnerable souls.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

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 

REDUCTIVE THINKING AND CULT PROPAGANDA: THE CASE OF ISKCON

Members of groups popularly identified as cults expend a great deal of energy attempting to deny that they are cults at all. Most often they claim the label is simply name-calling based on fear or outright discrimination. What we call begging they call “soliciting contributions,” whereas the love-bombing that alienates inquisitive youth from their families and friends is treated as a means of religious orientation similar to what a nun undergoes as a novice in a convent. In short, the tactics that cults employ for fundraising and indoctrination of new members might seem (at least superficially) to have parallels in the practices of organized mainstream religions. However, once you scratch the surface of the cult in question by examining its propaganda, you will find that what identifies it as a destructive pseudo-religion is not so much what its adherents do as the thinking behind their actions.

To illustrate my point, take my hand and descend with me into the vortex of the past, until you find yourself standing with me in spirit watching me as a 14 year- old girl accompanied by my 16 year-old sister as we approach the ISKCON temple at 26 Second Avenue in the East Village in New York’s Lower Eastside. It is a hot day in the summer of 1967 and we’re visiting the temple after having been informed of its existence at one of the Central Park “Be-In’s” we had attended a week earlier. What we find is a storefront plastered with images of the blue Hindu God Krishna and his retinue of cowherd girlfriends. Also prominent were photographs of an Indian Swami who strongly resembled the noted black actor Scatman Crothers. When we entered we saw rows of white men and women in saffron robes and saris with u-shaped chalk marks from their foreheads to their noses. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor with large metal plates of vegetarian food in front of them, which they were eating with their right hands only. We had stumbled upon one of their weekly love feasts! After standing in the doorway looking rather embarrassed, we were welcomed inside and promptly sat down to join the others and found the food to be quite good. As we left shortly thereafter, we were handed a couple of pamphlets and an issue of Back to Godhead magazine, which we were urged to read before we returned the following weekend. That, reader, is when the trouble started.

The pamphlet featured a story about an incident that occurred when the great Hindu space traveler-preacher Narada Muni visited the house of a pious man. He was depicted in the saffron robes of a celibate monk and held a pair of the small brass hand cymbals ubiquitous in Vaishnava (Hindus who worship the god Vishnu rather than the more typical Shiva) worship services. He related an anecdote in the life of a holy woman, who when importuned by a rich suitor, invited him to see her real beauty in a week. During this time she took a powerful laxative and stored her diarrhea in a number of jars (one would hope that they had tight lids!). When her suitor returned eager to see her “real beauty,” she directed him to her stool collection, telling him that it was where her former beauty resided, now that her purging had reduced her to a haggard, sunken-eyed shadow of her former self. One wonders how fast her suitor fled the scene, but, for us, it was a different matter.

We were simply mesmerized by the story, which seemed to us to have been a thunderbolt of truth Krishna had sent to illuminate our young minds. Imagine being pure spirit, always young and free of the ravages of age and disease! What we didn’t know was that we had been duped by one of the oldest and most effective of all brainwashing techniques cults utilize. As a form of argument, it is reductive thinking carried to an irrational extreme and is usually presented as a philosophical examination of a central human dilemma (such as the fleeting nature of physical beauty that Narada Muni treated in his story). It is then is subjected to what appears to be an objective analysis, but is in reality a withering rejection of human values that ends in rejecting the material world entirely. Furthermore, it treats this life as a trial the faithful must undergo in order to qualify for liberation from it and entrance into the spiritual realm. In practice, of course, it is a recipe for social alienation and psychological dysfunction. For those too weak to find a way out of its argumentative maze, it can be nothing more than a slow and acutely painful method of suicide.

First, let me begin by demolishing what masquerades as an objective analysis and forms the underpinning of Narada Muni’s argument. To the extent possible, I will cast it in the form of a syllogism so that its components (major premise, minor premise, and conclusion) are clear:

• The beauty we perceive in human beings ultimately turns into excrement;
• Beautiful women are human beings;
• Therefore, what makes women beautiful ultimately turns into excrement.

The basic flaw in the so-called logic of this argument should be obvious: it is a gross over-simplification based on extremely reductive thinking. For starters, the first premise is faulty because it ignores the fundamentality subjective nature of our perception of beauty, which is always based on a great deal more than mere appearance. In fact, one can argue that beauty as we perceive it is one of the most spiritual forms of appreciation we can have for another human being. Instead, the beauty=excrement analogy that underpins the major premise of Narada’s argument relies on the immature thinking of a young adolescent who, when just beginning to notice the opposite sex, claims that they are “gross” or fixates on some allegedly “disgusting” aspect of the object of their attraction. This nonsense is silly, of course, but it is just part of growing up. However, once the youth begins to appreciate the intelligence, wit, and other qualities that together can make even the less physically attractive seem beautiful, the youth has crossed from the doldrums of early adolescence into the bloom of a young adult. Unfortunately, in cultures where “child marriages” stunt the emotional development of both sexes, the squeamishness and disgust about sexuality that characterizes early adolescence becomes a permanent feature of their view of the relation between the sexes. Sorry to say, it’s a tragedy, not a state of transcendence that leads to such a reductive treatment of the nature of beauty.

Ultimately, the reductive thinking behind the story of the saintly girl leads to one inescapable conclusion: since the body is pure shit, ridding ourselves of it as soon as possible is something to strive for, even if, as we were advised at the temple, you should abide by Krishna’s instructions in the Bhagavad-Gita and not take any credit for the “fruit of your actions.” In other words, you should work like a automaton, and then, after spending your life chanting and hitting the road to dupe the public with a lot of inane propaganda, die, get cremated, and hope your soul returns to the land of ancient India that happens to be a big planet devoted to the adoration of a flute-playing cowherder and his girlfriends. What appeared to be a doctrine of bliss and contentment to two innocent teenage girls was in reality a cheap cover for a philosophy of renunciation that is a direct route to self-annihilation.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

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.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

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.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

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.

 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

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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