But people today put their faith in diversity and not in unity. What does unity mean? It is not the combination of many; it is the realisation of oneness.--Sathya Sai Baba
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Saturday, May 03, 2008
The Bee in Vir Sanghvi's Bonnet
©2008Lisa De Witt
Vir Sanghvi is on the prowl again. This time it is in an article (on a website apparently underwritten by The Wall Street Journal) titled "Godmen can't do any better than magicians."
In armchair critic Vir Sanghvi's latest attack on Hindu Godmen, he disingenuously states, "The truth is that every single “miracle” performed by India’s swamis can be reproduced — with more skill — by any moderately talented magician."
Apparently Vir Sanghvi has not done very thorough,
if any, research as there are many miracles such as
healings(Ref. 1),(Ref. 2) attributed to both Sathya Sai Baba and
Shirdi Sai Baba (not to mention other Hindu Masters) which cannot and have not been duplicated by magicians.
Unlike Vir Sanghvi, parapsychologist Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson made several visits to Sathya Sai Baba's ashram and wrote about his many personal experiences regarding Sai Baba's ability to manifest objects at will. In Professor Erlendur Haraldsson's book, Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on These Psychic Phenomena Associated With Sathya Sai Baba, he stated,
"Some years ago Dr. Osis discussed our observations with Doug Henning. Mr. Henning said that he could, with advance preparation, duplicate all the phenomena he saw on the film. But when Dr. Osis described the incident in which the enamel stone with Sai Baba's picture disappeared from Dr. Osis' ring, Mr. Henning commented that this was beyond the skills of the magicians. He stated further that if Sai Baba produces objects on demand, then he is performing feats that no magician can duplicate."
The operative phrase here is, "with advance preparation". The truth is, no person has been more "investigated and scrutinized" on the spot than Sathya Sai Baba in the over eighty years he has been alive. Over several decades, hundreds of books have been written about the miraculous phenomena surrounding Sathya Sai Baba. In the early seventies, socially conscious playwright and award-winning screenwriter, Rod Serling narrated Man of Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba in a series for broadcast television in the United States.
According to a January 24, 2002 obituary in The Arizona Republic, Dr. Frank Baranowski Ph.D.:
"appeared on the Larry King Show and was tested at four colleges and six clinics, including the famous Schmertz in Basel, Switzerland, for his amazing ability to see the human aura. He was featured in the motion pictures 'Mind, Body & Spirit,'' ''The Psychic Connection'' and has appeared on ''Sightings' ' and ''Unsolved Mysteries.'' Dr. Baranowski was covered by all major networks, the BBC and Canadian television. The consummate radio professional, Baranowski had a faithful and enormous audience on his ''Mysteries Around Us'' program."
Dr. Baranowski made the following statement about Sai Baba:
"Now, I have always been able to see the human aura. The auras around average people extend as much as three to five feet. Auras are composed of every imaginable colour and these colours change as a person's emotional, physical and mental states change. In general, whenever the colour blue is evident in a person's aura, it is an indication of deep spirituality; green is a healing color; yellow indicates high intelligence; and red means anger or frustration.
The colour pink, which is rarely seen, typifies a person capable of selfless love, and this was the colour that Sathya Sai Baba had around Him. The aura around Sathya Sai Baba went beyond the building reaching thirty or forty feet in all directions. Never having seen any aura like this before, my first reaction was to look for fluorescent lights, which may have been shining on Him. But as I watched, the beautiful pink energy pattern moved as He moved; there was no doubt that this was His aura.
Entranced by this remarkable sight, I barely heard the devotional songs that were being sung, and before I knew it, Sathya Sai Baba had gone. The crowd settled in the now-familiar cross-legged positions and prepared themselves to wait until Sathya Sai Baba's next appearance, four hours later.
I have had the pleasure of meeting such personalities as ex-president Gerald Ford, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, and Pope John Paul II, and I have studied their auras as well as tens of thousands of others, I say this not as a testimonial but as a fact; not one person I have ever seen has an aura to compare to the size and colour of Sathya Sai Baba's aura."
Read more
More recently, temples dedicated to Sai Baba and devotees have been releasing photos onto the internet of miraculous phenomena attributed to Sathya Sai Baba while skeptics remain totally mum about their existence (Ref.).
The last time Mr. Sanghvi wrote an article (The Truth about Sathya Sai Baba) bashing Sai Baba, his minions were quick to censor and delete both my comments and those of my associate Joe Moreno, webmaster of saisathyasai.com. (Ref.) This type of censorship has been a common occurrence when dealing with those inimical to spirituality, Hinduism and Sathya Sai Baba. While skeptics like Vir Sanghvi look down their noses and prattle about "ethics and honesty," their actions show anything but an honest spirit of debate. The skeptics are so threatened by the facts that they have taken to using the media to publish one-sided articles in which they think they will not be held accountable for their dishonest tactics. Skeptics try to present their opinions as fact and try to act like they are being objective when the truth is they are using their half-baked opinions to make money (while simultaneously pretending they have no selfish motives).
Dr. Venkataraman, who is the director of RadioSai.org, recently addressed Vir Sanghvi's unsubstantiated
accusations about Sathya Sai Baba by stating,
"Not all need believe that Baba is an Avatar. However, that disbelief does not give them the right to support unsubstantiated slander or cast aspersions on His social missions, and that too without even having bothered to become acquainted with the basic facts – anybody with decency would concede that there is no private charitable Trust that has done so much for the poor and the underprivileged of this country on the health and drinking water fields as Baba has done."
Professor Venkataraman is right. Religious beliefs are sacrosanct while criminal accusations must be addressed by law enforcement, not trial by internet.
One does have to wonder why a supposedly successful editor of a Hindu newspaper has taken upon himself the stance of bashing Hindus for the purpose of making money in written form. Does it pay well?
Update: My comment was posted (05/04/08) here (page 2) on Vir Sanghvi's newest article.
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Vir Sanghvi is on the prowl again. This time it is in an article (on a website apparently underwritten by The Wall Street Journal) titled "Godmen can't do any better than magicians."
In armchair critic Vir Sanghvi's latest attack on Hindu Godmen, he disingenuously states, "The truth is that every single “miracle” performed by India’s swamis can be reproduced — with more skill — by any moderately talented magician."
Apparently Vir Sanghvi has not done very thorough,
if any, research as there are many miracles such as
healings(Ref. 1),(Ref. 2) attributed to both Sathya Sai Baba and
Shirdi Sai Baba (not to mention other Hindu Masters) which cannot and have not been duplicated by magicians.
Unlike Vir Sanghvi, parapsychologist Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson made several visits to Sathya Sai Baba's ashram and wrote about his many personal experiences regarding Sai Baba's ability to manifest objects at will. In Professor Erlendur Haraldsson's book, Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on These Psychic Phenomena Associated With Sathya Sai Baba, he stated,
"Some years ago Dr. Osis discussed our observations with Doug Henning. Mr. Henning said that he could, with advance preparation, duplicate all the phenomena he saw on the film. But when Dr. Osis described the incident in which the enamel stone with Sai Baba's picture disappeared from Dr. Osis' ring, Mr. Henning commented that this was beyond the skills of the magicians. He stated further that if Sai Baba produces objects on demand, then he is performing feats that no magician can duplicate."
The operative phrase here is, "with advance preparation". The truth is, no person has been more "investigated and scrutinized" on the spot than Sathya Sai Baba in the over eighty years he has been alive. Over several decades, hundreds of books have been written about the miraculous phenomena surrounding Sathya Sai Baba. In the early seventies, socially conscious playwright and award-winning screenwriter, Rod Serling narrated Man of Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba in a series for broadcast television in the United States.
According to a January 24, 2002 obituary in The Arizona Republic, Dr. Frank Baranowski Ph.D.:
"appeared on the Larry King Show and was tested at four colleges and six clinics, including the famous Schmertz in Basel, Switzerland, for his amazing ability to see the human aura. He was featured in the motion pictures 'Mind, Body & Spirit,'' ''The Psychic Connection'' and has appeared on ''Sightings' ' and ''Unsolved Mysteries.'' Dr. Baranowski was covered by all major networks, the BBC and Canadian television. The consummate radio professional, Baranowski had a faithful and enormous audience on his ''Mysteries Around Us'' program."
Dr. Baranowski made the following statement about Sai Baba:
"Now, I have always been able to see the human aura. The auras around average people extend as much as three to five feet. Auras are composed of every imaginable colour and these colours change as a person's emotional, physical and mental states change. In general, whenever the colour blue is evident in a person's aura, it is an indication of deep spirituality; green is a healing color; yellow indicates high intelligence; and red means anger or frustration.
The colour pink, which is rarely seen, typifies a person capable of selfless love, and this was the colour that Sathya Sai Baba had around Him. The aura around Sathya Sai Baba went beyond the building reaching thirty or forty feet in all directions. Never having seen any aura like this before, my first reaction was to look for fluorescent lights, which may have been shining on Him. But as I watched, the beautiful pink energy pattern moved as He moved; there was no doubt that this was His aura.
Entranced by this remarkable sight, I barely heard the devotional songs that were being sung, and before I knew it, Sathya Sai Baba had gone. The crowd settled in the now-familiar cross-legged positions and prepared themselves to wait until Sathya Sai Baba's next appearance, four hours later.
I have had the pleasure of meeting such personalities as ex-president Gerald Ford, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, and Pope John Paul II, and I have studied their auras as well as tens of thousands of others, I say this not as a testimonial but as a fact; not one person I have ever seen has an aura to compare to the size and colour of Sathya Sai Baba's aura."
Read more
More recently, temples dedicated to Sai Baba and devotees have been releasing photos onto the internet of miraculous phenomena attributed to Sathya Sai Baba while skeptics remain totally mum about their existence (Ref.).
The last time Mr. Sanghvi wrote an article (The Truth about Sathya Sai Baba) bashing Sai Baba, his minions were quick to censor and delete both my comments and those of my associate Joe Moreno, webmaster of saisathyasai.com. (Ref.) This type of censorship has been a common occurrence when dealing with those inimical to spirituality, Hinduism and Sathya Sai Baba. While skeptics like Vir Sanghvi look down their noses and prattle about "ethics and honesty," their actions show anything but an honest spirit of debate. The skeptics are so threatened by the facts that they have taken to using the media to publish one-sided articles in which they think they will not be held accountable for their dishonest tactics. Skeptics try to present their opinions as fact and try to act like they are being objective when the truth is they are using their half-baked opinions to make money (while simultaneously pretending they have no selfish motives).
Dr. Venkataraman, who is the director of RadioSai.org, recently addressed Vir Sanghvi's unsubstantiated
accusations about Sathya Sai Baba by stating,
"Not all need believe that Baba is an Avatar. However, that disbelief does not give them the right to support unsubstantiated slander or cast aspersions on His social missions, and that too without even having bothered to become acquainted with the basic facts – anybody with decency would concede that there is no private charitable Trust that has done so much for the poor and the underprivileged of this country on the health and drinking water fields as Baba has done."
Professor Venkataraman is right. Religious beliefs are sacrosanct while criminal accusations must be addressed by law enforcement, not trial by internet.
One does have to wonder why a supposedly successful editor of a Hindu newspaper has taken upon himself the stance of bashing Hindus for the purpose of making money in written form. Does it pay well?
Update: My comment was posted (05/04/08) here (page 2) on Vir Sanghvi's newest article.
src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter_xhtml.js">
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Will Barry Pittard remain forever trapped in his obsessive 'hate complex'?
Clearly, Puttaparthi is a medieval fiefdom, ruled over by its despotic feudal Lord Sai Baba, and his shameless barons such as Indulal Shah, impervious to the forces of the law.--Barry Pittard, Anti-Sai Extremist
©2008Lisa De Witt
Barry Pittard, the self-proclaimed, self-promoting international coordinator for the anti-Sai Baba movement, has been huffing and puffing for years, daily obsessing over accusations regarding Sai Baba and gossiping like an old woman drunk on rum balls at a tea party. Barry has spammed the internet with hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of his dishonest diatribes filled with unsubstantiated second-hand stories (hearsay), misrepresentations and half-truths for which anti-Sais are so well-known. One frustrated blogger named Rajeev even wrote,
"I keep getting mail from some (white Christian?) Australian nut-case about how he has evidence that the Sai Baba molested children, but the evidence never materializes. Compare this to the hundreds, if not thousands, of Catholic priests accused and many formally convicted in court of large-scale pedophilia across several continents."
One ex-devotee connected to the anti-Sai campaign wrote complaining about Pittard's secrecy and stalling tactics in 2001 (Ref.)
59: 11-01-01 TERRIE
“I agree with you about the non-value of hearsay. That is one reason that I have ‘retired’ from the exposé, except for helping a little with Sunrise. The Sunrise staff will not emphasize the molestation stories because we don’t know anyone personally who was molested. We also will no longer post letters by someone who says, “I know somone who was molested,” or “I’m in contact with victims.” If the so-called victims want to fight for what is right, then it is up to them to speak out and use their real names, not send their message via a third party. It is the victims who should be carrying the exposé, not those who are relying on hearsay.”
66: 11-05-01 TERRIE
“Barry, I am not the ex-devotee in the street. I’ve helped with Sunrise almost from its beginning and have monitored discussion boards. If you and everyone else who personally knows victims have not seen fit to put even one victim in touch with me (aside from the few well known victims who have posted their stories on the Internet), where does that put faith and trust? Do you think I am going to shout the names of sb’s victims from the rooftops??? I am therefore put in my present position of not being a credible witness to anything. Time to leave the floundering exposé.”
Another anti-Sai posting as SUNRISE (representing the Snowcrest/Sunrise website which is run by a Christian pastor named Dennis Engdahl) wrote:
73: 11-08-01 SUNRISE
"We continue to feel that the victims should be out there fighting for themselves and any future victims there might be. The current situation reminds us of the prince (victims) who sends his servant (non-victims working for the exposé) to fetch the bride (the truth about sb). The bride never makes it back to the prince, but runs off with the servant. (Without the victims, the truth will be known only to a few "believers," and the exposé will fail.)
The exposé cannot succeed without the victims having the courage to present themselves before the world and tell their story. But perhaps a global catrastrophe will make it all unecessary. SB will go down in the general chaos."
Yes folks, this is the mentality of these apocalyptic vigilantes! They hope there will be a global catastrophe which would kill Sai Baba AND many others just so they don't have to demand that accusers press charges as is required of ALL alleged victims of crimes!
By Pittard's own admission he was kicked out of the ashram in 1982 and told never to return again after spreading the same type of gossip he is now recycling on the internet. Somehow, Pittard was able to weasel his way back into the ashram with a woman named Shanti in the late nineties only to cause more problems. The truth is, not even ONE of the dubiously alleged "hundreds of mostly white adult (not children) male victims" have had the guts to file charges or file a court case despite even more dubious anti-Sai claims of 'irrefutable evidence' that Sai Baba is a 'pedophile' and years of brow beating the public over the head with bullying
(Ref.) and fearmongering tactics. Even the BBC could not find any Indian children claiming to have been molested and resorted to parading two white adult males (who contradicted their previous stories) in the Secret Swami 'crockumentary'. Where are all the abused Indian children and their irate parents, Barry?
One must note that while Pittard claims to have "world-class legal resources" at his beck and call, not one lawyer has chosen to represent any of those accusers or even make a statement backing Pittard's claims. In other words there are NO legal entities backing Barry Pittard's claims. In fact, Barry Pittard tries to cover up the fact that not one of the accusers, all adults, has ever even tried to file charges with the police in India. Accusers ONLY tell their tales of woe to anti-Sai activists and the media yet avoid law enforcement and even money hungry lawyers.
From 2002 until his unseating in 2005, the very ignorant MP, Tony Colman was being used by anti-Sai activists (including Barry Pittard) to try and smear Sai Baba in Parliament as a pedophile without any proof whatsoever. Colman even wrote Prime Minister Tony Blair several letters, all documented on the UK government website (Ref.). In one of several letters, Prime Minister Blair replied to Colman,
Officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and other Government Departments are aware of the many allegations against Sai Baba. Our High Commission in New Delhi and Deputy High Commission in Chennai continue to monitor the situation closely. However, as I understand, FCO Ministers explained to you last year, there is little that the Government can do. Those who have complaints against Sai Baba will have to take them to the Indian police. No formal charges have been brought against him.
Pittard also covers up the fact that all the identified accusers claims are past the statute of limitations, even though he claims to be in contact with competent lawyers. How's that for
'accountability' Barry? Yet Barry Pittard continues to hide behind his smoke screen, ranting and raving like a prima donna about his many anonymous contacts and 'informants'. Like most anti-Sais, Pittard pretends to know things he does not know and generally makes a fool of himself by refusing to answer legitimate questions regarding accusations while hypocritically babbling about 'lack of accountability' and 'cult-like secretiveness'; all qualities he himself exhibits on a daily basis while he peddles his agenda from behind a self-made iron curtain as he acts as a front man for a group of white (except for an Iranian-American and a African-Brit) adult males who claim to have been molested but were too cowardly to file charges in India within statutory mandates.
Anti-Sai apologists have erroneously tried to claim and even outright stated that they do not need a court of law
(Ref.) to find Sathya Sai Baba guilty. Pittard et al use the excuse (just one of many ruses) that they have ‘irrefutable evidence'. This is the type of illogic and dishonesty which drives a smear campaign run almost exclusively by white male foreigners who feel emboldened to harass the Sai Organization, worldwide devotees, the Indian people and Indian government in the name of justice. It is important to note that the identified accusers are also adult, predominantly white male foreigners. This smear campaign is a lot like a Hollywood movie set. From a distance it looks 'real', but when you get up close and examine the structure of the buildings, you find they are all phony fronts. No substance. Phony. False fronts. Unsubstantiated accusations along with cult-like pressure tactics (guilt-tripping, etc.) and feeding the hysteria and apparent lie 'that children are being molested' has led to the manipulation of ignorant and unsuspecting journalists (Ref. 1), (Ref. 2),
(Ref.3) hoping to make a name for themselves. 'Guilty until proven innocent,' is the philosophy they try to inculcate in others (including me when I began to look into their accusations in 2002) and what makes this extra-legal movement so very dangerous as they suspiciously try to hold justice hostage by making serious criminal accusations which have not been vetted through the legal system.
Barry Pittard lied when he claimed in an article posted on the Snowcrest/Sunrise website in September 2001:
Until the NEXUS article, mentioned below, I dismissed for many years as absurd no fewer than nine accounts of sexual abuse by Sai Baba, five of which I had heard between 1978 and 1982, and two shortly before I read the article, the rest between 1997 and 2000.
In a previous article dated just two months earlier (July 14, 2001) Pittard bragged about his attempt to "bring Sai Baba to justice...cough, cough" when he wrote:
Very crucially, we speak of April, 1982. I left Puttparthi to seek out two great saints, to get their assistance in how I should dharmically go about handling a report made to me that Sai Baba had been engaged in homosexual activity since he was a boy.
One of these spiritual figures was Swami Chidananda, the successor to the historically renowned Swami Shivandanda, of the Divine Life Mission, at Rishikesh. The other was Ananda Mai Ma, of Haridwar, of whom you can read in Yogananda's famous Autobiography of a Yogi. My process is too involved to do justice to. In essence, I decided that because of my experiences of countless incredible experiences of Sai Baba whom I regarded as totally Divine, the stories could not be true.
I got back to Puttaparthi in July. An Australian woman knew that I had lived lengthily around Sai Baba. She was in some distress. She told me that she had heard Sai Baba was had at some time engaged in homosexual activity. I told her I would do my best to address the matter. I went to the famous author, my fellow Australian, Howard Murphet, who has written a series of best selling books on Sai Baba, and to Richard Bayer, from the U.S.A., the most senior Sai Organization official then present at Puttaparthi.... Murphet was as finely courteous as Bayer was extremely rude.
Within days, I was told by Kutumb Rao, the then Manager of Puttaparthi, a retired Judge of the Andhra Pradesh Court, that Sai Baba had ordered him to send me out, never to return.
The Snowcrest website (also known as Sunrise), even labeled Pittard's article with the url tag, St. Barry! It is very clear from Pittard's comments and actions that he thought he was some great white super sleuth who was going to "expose" Sai Baba as being a homosexual. Some people have recently come forward claiming Barry Pittard was thrown out of the ashram for public nudity/indecent exposure (Ref.)! Barry Pittard impregnated a twenty year old out of wedlock when he was almost sixty years old and dishonestly claims on the internet she was his wife even though he never married her.
Front men such as Barry Pittard, whose connections to
Nexus magazine and Adelaide Institute indicate that he may operate under the aegis of white supremacists, use anti-Hindu rhetoric and blatant misinformation to accuse the Indian government of a ‘crime’ it has not committed and attempt to mock justice by refusing to use the legal system to process suspicious, unsubstantiated accusations of sexual abuse and fraud. Intelligent people know it only takes ONE credible victim to process such a claim so there is absolutely NO excuse considering Pittard et al repeatedly brag that they have 'irrefutable evidence' and numerous credible witnesses.
Duncan Roads, owner of Nexus Magazine showed his antipathy for and ignorance of the legal system when he posted the following comment (this website owned by Reinier van der Sandt has been permanently blocked due to malicious copyright infringement of saisathyasai.com...see exbaba.com guestbook, 2007 entries) on the Exbaba guestbook. And speaking of deception, all of the accusers in Duncan Roads dubious magazine article, Sai Baba: guru gone wrong?, (Ref.), alleging Sai Baba's pedophilia were ADULTS, not children! Duncan Roads claims he seriously investigated the accusations but has never once asked any of the ADULT male accusers (who he claims are children) to file charges. Why didn't Duncan Roads follow his very vocal, dramatic "true believer" convictions and use those deep pockets to get his alleged "victims" some help filing charges after he used them to make money selling his magazine? Actions speak much louder than words, Duncan.
Interestingly, Duncan Roads is an AIDS denier (who also says he is opened-minded about the Holocaust), along with the reptilian conspiracist David Icke. My position on the AIDS deniers is that they appear to be a group of racists who are targeting countries with people of color to spread their disinformation and many of these same people "just happen" to also be involved in the smear campaign against Sai Baba. Many years ago, before I ever knew about the accusations regarding Sai Baba, a friend of mine who used to work for the NSA told me Duncan Roads was a racist.
In a 1997 Sydney Morning Herald article titled
The Plot Thickens, Richard Guillatt wrote,
Roads acknowledges he was somewhat naive in his early days as an editor; he printed an article on the banking system, for instance, without realising that its author was a White Supremacist who believes that interracial couples should be exterminated. These days, he assures me, he is careful to make sure articles are authoritative and well researched.
Yeah, right! We can see in the statement below from the exbaba.com guestbook how carefully researched and objective Duncan Roads comments are.
Home Page:
Date: Wed Jan 03 04:01:25 2007
Referred By: Duncan Roads
Thank God more and more people are waking up to the fact that Sai Baba is a rapist and a pedophile.
If only more Sai Baba 'believers' would examine both sides of the debate and see for themselves, but they are obviously too afraid of learning that they have been conned.
Thus these 'true believers' still have major ego problems, else they would be able to read and confront the ugly truth of their deception.
Duncan Roads
Editor
Nexus Magazine
Barry Pittard, who is known in earlier years to have dyed his hair blonde, has specifically targeted a Rabbi, a doctor named Goldstein and a doctor Anand in his hate-based writings. In one of his recent hate-filled blog diatribes, Barry Pittard incorrectly calls and even libels Michael Jackson as a
convicted megastar (with a pic of Jackson behind bars). The apparently power-drunk Pittard was asleep at the wheel when Jackson was acquitted on ALL counts! The accuser's mother was then arrested and convicted on welfare fraud charges as a result of evidence brought forth by Jackson's attorney. Is this attempt to smear an innocent black man just more anecdotal proof Pittard is a white supremacist? What part of INNOCENT until proven guilty doesn't Pittard and his democratically-challenged buddies understand?
Part of the purpose of this extra-legal campaign seems to be to incite public violence and enlist mentally unstable persons in an attempt to encourage the assassination of Sathya Sai Baba as well as to discredit and destabilize the Indian government.
Given Pittard's lynch mob, win-at-all-cost mentality and penchant for embellishing and attempting to legitimize claims which are just NOT credible given the KNOWN facts, I am seriously beginning to wonder if he is not an alcoholic and/or paranoid schizophrenic. When you combine the issue of Pittard's twisting and down right cover-up of many of the facts, one is left with the distinct impression that there is something very wrong with Barry Pittard.
One thing is certain though. Barry Pittard and other anti-Sais like Robert Priddy, Duncan Roads and Conny Larsson live in their own virtual reality where they think they can con the general public into believing "men" eighteen years and older are children who claim to have been molested! Go figure.
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©2008Lisa De Witt
Barry Pittard, the self-proclaimed, self-promoting international coordinator for the anti-Sai Baba movement, has been huffing and puffing for years, daily obsessing over accusations regarding Sai Baba and gossiping like an old woman drunk on rum balls at a tea party. Barry has spammed the internet with hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of his dishonest diatribes filled with unsubstantiated second-hand stories (hearsay), misrepresentations and half-truths for which anti-Sais are so well-known. One frustrated blogger named Rajeev even wrote,
"I keep getting mail from some (white Christian?) Australian nut-case about how he has evidence that the Sai Baba molested children, but the evidence never materializes. Compare this to the hundreds, if not thousands, of Catholic priests accused and many formally convicted in court of large-scale pedophilia across several continents."
One ex-devotee connected to the anti-Sai campaign wrote complaining about Pittard's secrecy and stalling tactics in 2001 (Ref.)
59: 11-01-01 TERRIE
“I agree with you about the non-value of hearsay. That is one reason that I have ‘retired’ from the exposé, except for helping a little with Sunrise. The Sunrise staff will not emphasize the molestation stories because we don’t know anyone personally who was molested. We also will no longer post letters by someone who says, “I know somone who was molested,” or “I’m in contact with victims.” If the so-called victims want to fight for what is right, then it is up to them to speak out and use their real names, not send their message via a third party. It is the victims who should be carrying the exposé, not those who are relying on hearsay.”
66: 11-05-01 TERRIE
“Barry, I am not the ex-devotee in the street. I’ve helped with Sunrise almost from its beginning and have monitored discussion boards. If you and everyone else who personally knows victims have not seen fit to put even one victim in touch with me (aside from the few well known victims who have posted their stories on the Internet), where does that put faith and trust? Do you think I am going to shout the names of sb’s victims from the rooftops??? I am therefore put in my present position of not being a credible witness to anything. Time to leave the floundering exposé.”
Another anti-Sai posting as SUNRISE (representing the Snowcrest/Sunrise website which is run by a Christian pastor named Dennis Engdahl) wrote:
73: 11-08-01 SUNRISE
"We continue to feel that the victims should be out there fighting for themselves and any future victims there might be. The current situation reminds us of the prince (victims) who sends his servant (non-victims working for the exposé) to fetch the bride (the truth about sb). The bride never makes it back to the prince, but runs off with the servant. (Without the victims, the truth will be known only to a few "believers," and the exposé will fail.)
The exposé cannot succeed without the victims having the courage to present themselves before the world and tell their story. But perhaps a global catrastrophe will make it all unecessary. SB will go down in the general chaos."
Yes folks, this is the mentality of these apocalyptic vigilantes! They hope there will be a global catastrophe which would kill Sai Baba AND many others just so they don't have to demand that accusers press charges as is required of ALL alleged victims of crimes!
By Pittard's own admission he was kicked out of the ashram in 1982 and told never to return again after spreading the same type of gossip he is now recycling on the internet. Somehow, Pittard was able to weasel his way back into the ashram with a woman named Shanti in the late nineties only to cause more problems. The truth is, not even ONE of the dubiously alleged "hundreds of mostly white adult (not children) male victims" have had the guts to file charges or file a court case despite even more dubious anti-Sai claims of 'irrefutable evidence' that Sai Baba is a 'pedophile' and years of brow beating the public over the head with bullying
(Ref.) and fearmongering tactics. Even the BBC could not find any Indian children claiming to have been molested and resorted to parading two white adult males (who contradicted their previous stories) in the Secret Swami 'crockumentary'. Where are all the abused Indian children and their irate parents, Barry?
One must note that while Pittard claims to have "world-class legal resources" at his beck and call, not one lawyer has chosen to represent any of those accusers or even make a statement backing Pittard's claims. In other words there are NO legal entities backing Barry Pittard's claims. In fact, Barry Pittard tries to cover up the fact that not one of the accusers, all adults, has ever even tried to file charges with the police in India. Accusers ONLY tell their tales of woe to anti-Sai activists and the media yet avoid law enforcement and even money hungry lawyers.
From 2002 until his unseating in 2005, the very ignorant MP, Tony Colman was being used by anti-Sai activists (including Barry Pittard) to try and smear Sai Baba in Parliament as a pedophile without any proof whatsoever. Colman even wrote Prime Minister Tony Blair several letters, all documented on the UK government website (Ref.). In one of several letters, Prime Minister Blair replied to Colman,
Officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and other Government Departments are aware of the many allegations against Sai Baba. Our High Commission in New Delhi and Deputy High Commission in Chennai continue to monitor the situation closely. However, as I understand, FCO Ministers explained to you last year, there is little that the Government can do. Those who have complaints against Sai Baba will have to take them to the Indian police. No formal charges have been brought against him.
Pittard also covers up the fact that all the identified accusers claims are past the statute of limitations, even though he claims to be in contact with competent lawyers. How's that for
'accountability' Barry? Yet Barry Pittard continues to hide behind his smoke screen, ranting and raving like a prima donna about his many anonymous contacts and 'informants'. Like most anti-Sais, Pittard pretends to know things he does not know and generally makes a fool of himself by refusing to answer legitimate questions regarding accusations while hypocritically babbling about 'lack of accountability' and 'cult-like secretiveness'; all qualities he himself exhibits on a daily basis while he peddles his agenda from behind a self-made iron curtain as he acts as a front man for a group of white (except for an Iranian-American and a African-Brit) adult males who claim to have been molested but were too cowardly to file charges in India within statutory mandates.
Anti-Sai apologists have erroneously tried to claim and even outright stated that they do not need a court of law
(Ref.) to find Sathya Sai Baba guilty. Pittard et al use the excuse (just one of many ruses) that they have ‘irrefutable evidence'. This is the type of illogic and dishonesty which drives a smear campaign run almost exclusively by white male foreigners who feel emboldened to harass the Sai Organization, worldwide devotees, the Indian people and Indian government in the name of justice. It is important to note that the identified accusers are also adult, predominantly white male foreigners. This smear campaign is a lot like a Hollywood movie set. From a distance it looks 'real', but when you get up close and examine the structure of the buildings, you find they are all phony fronts. No substance. Phony. False fronts. Unsubstantiated accusations along with cult-like pressure tactics (guilt-tripping, etc.) and feeding the hysteria and apparent lie 'that children are being molested' has led to the manipulation of ignorant and unsuspecting journalists (Ref. 1), (Ref. 2),
(Ref.3) hoping to make a name for themselves. 'Guilty until proven innocent,' is the philosophy they try to inculcate in others (including me when I began to look into their accusations in 2002) and what makes this extra-legal movement so very dangerous as they suspiciously try to hold justice hostage by making serious criminal accusations which have not been vetted through the legal system.
Barry Pittard lied when he claimed in an article posted on the Snowcrest/Sunrise website in September 2001:
Until the NEXUS article, mentioned below, I dismissed for many years as absurd no fewer than nine accounts of sexual abuse by Sai Baba, five of which I had heard between 1978 and 1982, and two shortly before I read the article, the rest between 1997 and 2000.
In a previous article dated just two months earlier (July 14, 2001) Pittard bragged about his attempt to "bring Sai Baba to justice...cough, cough" when he wrote:
Very crucially, we speak of April, 1982. I left Puttparthi to seek out two great saints, to get their assistance in how I should dharmically go about handling a report made to me that Sai Baba had been engaged in homosexual activity since he was a boy.
One of these spiritual figures was Swami Chidananda, the successor to the historically renowned Swami Shivandanda, of the Divine Life Mission, at Rishikesh. The other was Ananda Mai Ma, of Haridwar, of whom you can read in Yogananda's famous Autobiography of a Yogi. My process is too involved to do justice to. In essence, I decided that because of my experiences of countless incredible experiences of Sai Baba whom I regarded as totally Divine, the stories could not be true.
I got back to Puttaparthi in July. An Australian woman knew that I had lived lengthily around Sai Baba. She was in some distress. She told me that she had heard Sai Baba was had at some time engaged in homosexual activity. I told her I would do my best to address the matter. I went to the famous author, my fellow Australian, Howard Murphet, who has written a series of best selling books on Sai Baba, and to Richard Bayer, from the U.S.A., the most senior Sai Organization official then present at Puttaparthi.... Murphet was as finely courteous as Bayer was extremely rude.
Within days, I was told by Kutumb Rao, the then Manager of Puttaparthi, a retired Judge of the Andhra Pradesh Court, that Sai Baba had ordered him to send me out, never to return.
The Snowcrest website (also known as Sunrise), even labeled Pittard's article with the url tag, St. Barry! It is very clear from Pittard's comments and actions that he thought he was some great white super sleuth who was going to "expose" Sai Baba as being a homosexual. Some people have recently come forward claiming Barry Pittard was thrown out of the ashram for public nudity/indecent exposure (Ref.)! Barry Pittard impregnated a twenty year old out of wedlock when he was almost sixty years old and dishonestly claims on the internet she was his wife even though he never married her.
Front men such as Barry Pittard, whose connections to
Nexus magazine and Adelaide Institute indicate that he may operate under the aegis of white supremacists, use anti-Hindu rhetoric and blatant misinformation to accuse the Indian government of a ‘crime’ it has not committed and attempt to mock justice by refusing to use the legal system to process suspicious, unsubstantiated accusations of sexual abuse and fraud. Intelligent people know it only takes ONE credible victim to process such a claim so there is absolutely NO excuse considering Pittard et al repeatedly brag that they have 'irrefutable evidence' and numerous credible witnesses.
Duncan Roads, owner of Nexus Magazine showed his antipathy for and ignorance of the legal system when he posted the following comment (this website owned by Reinier van der Sandt has been permanently blocked due to malicious copyright infringement of saisathyasai.com...see exbaba.com guestbook, 2007 entries) on the Exbaba guestbook. And speaking of deception, all of the accusers in Duncan Roads dubious magazine article, Sai Baba: guru gone wrong?, (Ref.), alleging Sai Baba's pedophilia were ADULTS, not children! Duncan Roads claims he seriously investigated the accusations but has never once asked any of the ADULT male accusers (who he claims are children) to file charges. Why didn't Duncan Roads follow his very vocal, dramatic "true believer" convictions and use those deep pockets to get his alleged "victims" some help filing charges after he used them to make money selling his magazine? Actions speak much louder than words, Duncan.
Interestingly, Duncan Roads is an AIDS denier (who also says he is opened-minded about the Holocaust), along with the reptilian conspiracist David Icke. My position on the AIDS deniers is that they appear to be a group of racists who are targeting countries with people of color to spread their disinformation and many of these same people "just happen" to also be involved in the smear campaign against Sai Baba. Many years ago, before I ever knew about the accusations regarding Sai Baba, a friend of mine who used to work for the NSA told me Duncan Roads was a racist.
In a 1997 Sydney Morning Herald article titled
The Plot Thickens, Richard Guillatt wrote,
Roads acknowledges he was somewhat naive in his early days as an editor; he printed an article on the banking system, for instance, without realising that its author was a White Supremacist who believes that interracial couples should be exterminated. These days, he assures me, he is careful to make sure articles are authoritative and well researched.
Yeah, right! We can see in the statement below from the exbaba.com guestbook how carefully researched and objective Duncan Roads comments are.
Home Page:
Date: Wed Jan 03 04:01:25 2007
Referred By: Duncan Roads
Thank God more and more people are waking up to the fact that Sai Baba is a rapist and a pedophile.
If only more Sai Baba 'believers' would examine both sides of the debate and see for themselves, but they are obviously too afraid of learning that they have been conned.
Thus these 'true believers' still have major ego problems, else they would be able to read and confront the ugly truth of their deception.
Duncan Roads
Editor
Nexus Magazine
Barry Pittard, who is known in earlier years to have dyed his hair blonde, has specifically targeted a Rabbi, a doctor named Goldstein and a doctor Anand in his hate-based writings. In one of his recent hate-filled blog diatribes, Barry Pittard incorrectly calls and even libels Michael Jackson as a
convicted megastar (with a pic of Jackson behind bars). The apparently power-drunk Pittard was asleep at the wheel when Jackson was acquitted on ALL counts! The accuser's mother was then arrested and convicted on welfare fraud charges as a result of evidence brought forth by Jackson's attorney. Is this attempt to smear an innocent black man just more anecdotal proof Pittard is a white supremacist? What part of INNOCENT until proven guilty doesn't Pittard and his democratically-challenged buddies understand?
Part of the purpose of this extra-legal campaign seems to be to incite public violence and enlist mentally unstable persons in an attempt to encourage the assassination of Sathya Sai Baba as well as to discredit and destabilize the Indian government.
Given Pittard's lynch mob, win-at-all-cost mentality and penchant for embellishing and attempting to legitimize claims which are just NOT credible given the KNOWN facts, I am seriously beginning to wonder if he is not an alcoholic and/or paranoid schizophrenic. When you combine the issue of Pittard's twisting and down right cover-up of many of the facts, one is left with the distinct impression that there is something very wrong with Barry Pittard.
One thing is certain though. Barry Pittard and other anti-Sais like Robert Priddy, Duncan Roads and Conny Larsson live in their own virtual reality where they think they can con the general public into believing "men" eighteen years and older are children who claim to have been molested! Go figure.
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Friday, February 15, 2008
'Guru-Buster' Basava Premanand Busted Again!
Mr. Basava Premanand is known as the James Randi of the Indian sub-continent, which I regard as a compliment indeed.
--James Randi, 'Skeptic'
©2008Lisa De Witt
In the Nov 2007 Volume 20; No.07 (dated 15-11-2007) issue of his Indian Skeptic Magazine, Premanand tries to pass off a fraudulent black and white photo of Sathya Sai Baba with Idi Amin, who was born in 1925 and died in 2003. This tampered photo is eerily similar to one copyrighted and published in the online RadioSai Newsletter in February 2006 with the caption...Dr G Venkataraman (left) and Sri K. Chakravarthi with Swami after the ceremony.
It is obvious that Chakravarthi's image was replaced with Idi Amin who would actually be a year older than then 81 year old Sai Baba if Amin were still alive. The only time Sai Baba traveled to Uganda was in 1968 when he visited devotees, one of which was then Major General Idi Amin's doctor, a Dr. Patel. At that time, Sai Baba advised both Dr. Patel and a Dr. Gadhia to leave the country. A few years later Amin staged a coup and became dictator, eventually expelling all Asians and massacring countless civilians.
In February 2007, Robert Priddy had posted a color copy of the very same composite on his blog (Ref.) with an article about Idi Amin. In true paranoid form, the great intellectual giant Priddy ignorantly implies Sai Baba went to Uganda to hold 'secret meetings' with Amin to convince him to delay the expulsion of Asians when Amin was not even dictator yet! One can see Priddy's attempt to lie about and distort the well-documented accounts of both Patel and Gadhia as to Sai Baba's reason for visiting Uganda. On one hand, Priddy mocks devotees' stories about Amin and then tries to pass them off as being legitimate, showing his inability to discern between fact and fiction or gossip. Priddy also believes Ullrich Zimmermann
(Ref.), Keith Ord, Alaya Rahm and Neptune who claim to have seen Sai Baba's genitalia supernaturally morph from male to female! Far be it for Priddy to mock others for what he deems devotees' 'gullibility' when he cannot even resolve his own hypocrisy, contradictions, rationalizations and equivocations which point toward his own very deep-seated confusion. Like Barry Pittard, Priddy hides out on the internet where he can insulate himself from having to answer questions about these issues.
Basava Premanand has resorted in the November 2007 issue to publishing no less than nine articles either written by or about discredited anti-Sai extremist and apostate, Robert Priddy. The very shady British-born Priddy, whose legal birth name was Robin Crichton Priddy, wrote a pro-Sai Baba book published by Samuel Weiser in 1997, republished by Sai Towers in 1999-2000 (Ref.) and as far as I know is still being sold in the ashram bookstore to this day. In Source of the Dream Priddy claimed, among other miracles, that Sai Baba healed his very debilitating spinal abnormality in a series of dream operations. Priddy has since refused to answer my questions regarding his glaring contradictions. On Robert Priddy's website, he lists the initial date of publication of his pro-Sai Baba book, Source of the Dream as sometime in 1994 (1st ed., Bangalore - out of print)(Ref.). This is very important since Robert Priddy has also provided his alleged diary notes from March, 1994 in which he entered the following
information about his chronic back problem:
SUNDAY 27/3/94 (Bhajan all day)
Afternoon darshan: Sat in chair at back. He came down to the last block and looked in my direction – but did not fixate gaze on me. [Same way?]
I had back problems again.
Below this entry, Priddy has tried recently to explain away his contradictory claim (which I have pressed him about) in his book, Source of the Dream that his back was healed by Sai Baba in a series of dream operations.
Priddy writes the following comment in blue below the above diary entry:
Comment: Once I had thought that Sai Baba had helped cure my spinal misalignment problems - caused by several falls from childhood onwards - especially though[sic] a dream. I later realised, when the problems returned and got worse, that it had just been some temporary placebo effect.
In a recent blog post, Priddy continues to dig his hole even deeper with the following statement (Ref.),
I should add that I have never received any kind of homosexual suggestion in my meetings with Sai Baba, nor in any of the several hundred dreams I have recorded in which he has figured prominently. Once he put his lips to my mouth, at which I felt disgust, but he instead seemed to such[sic] out of my spine something which was causing the spinal problems I suffered from since the age of 40-odd. It was made clear in the dream that it was not a kiss even, but some kind of therapy. Strangely, some years later I was with Sai leaders after a conference in Denmark when I told of this and the wife of the leader in Austria said she had experienced EXACTLY the same. She too had spinal problems after falling down a flight of stairs. I can’t explain this other than by the machinations of unconscious wish fulfillment of hoping to be cured, but I can say that there was no improvement in either of our conditions afterwards. (I was born with spina bifida okulta).
Apparently Priddy does not realize he just provided in written evidence his own admission that his back problem was not "cured" as he claims in his book which was also published that year and for which he received a disability pension in 1985. Thus, we are left to believe Priddy intentionally committed fraud in Source of the Dream when he claimed his back was healed by a series of dream operations.
In Source of the Dream Priddy claimed the following conversation took place between him and an Osteopath. This June 1987 event was apparently proceeded by a dream operation in November 1986.
Almost at once he claimed that neither of the two sets of my X rays from different years were mine, because in them the lower spine was in a much more serious condition than I proved to have when he examined it physically. It showed an excessive curvature and a lower vertebra that was badly and permanently displaced. He was even surprised that I was able to walk about with it! Without any comment whatsoever from me he remarked, ‘I would have staked my professional reputation that these X rays are not yours!’ However, my name was photographed into each one. He asked me what on earth I had been doing - how the great improvement in my spine was achieved. I told him I had hardly been able to walk much of the time, let alone exercise. He shook his head and said, most perplexed, that anyway there was simply no method or exercises he knew whereby I could have made the condition so much better...It was not until afterward that I remembered the dream of the operation ‘under anesthesia’ and the bandages on my thighs and mid-riff on either side of the crisis point in my lower spine! Before the ‘rat in the drum’ episode I had even been unable to walk about the house for long without having to lie down. Yet within a month I had gone to India, sitting on airplanes and walking for hours in a day without more than a few tensions! Though I had felt sure that Baba was helping me, I had not realized how radical a change this had required to my anatomy!(Source Of The Dream, 1999 ed.; “Enigmas of Suffering and Healing”; pp: 179, 181)
However, in April 1989, Narasimhan wrote in a letter to Priddy (Ref.),
As regards the dreams related by you they are certainly significant although it may not be easy to make out precisely what they mean in relation to the future.
I do hope that by Bhagavan's grace you will soon get over your spinal trouble. I presume you are making regular use of Swami's vibhuti.
Compounding this situation is the fact that Robert Priddy then went to another publisher, Samuel Weiser and had this claim republished in 1997! Then he had it republished again in 2000 by Sai Towers before he defected and only THEN began suspiciously retracting his claim of being healed when it served his agenda.
In acts of desperation and vindictiveness, Priddy has used his keyboard-dripping malice to spout many unverifiable and wholly unbelievable claims and outright lies such as one about me being banned from Wikipedia. Even after making a public retraction in 2006, Priddy used the pseudonym 'bandbox' to spread the same lie in 2007
(Ref.). Priddy is now also spreading this lie on his blog. Of course, Robert Priddy does not tell people that he and Barry Pittard were banned from both Digg and Netscape for their hate-filled diatribes. The ultra-devotee turned polemicist has recently penned a Baba-bashing book, End of the Dream, published by none other than the atheist Basava Premanand. Nothing like making money on both ends eh Robert? Priddy has posted the following document on his website showing he received 8%/10% royalties from over 2000 copies of his pro-Sai Baba book as late as 2002 (Ref.).
It is important to note that while Priddy bashes and trashes the Sai organisation on a daily basis, he continues to plug his book Source of the Dream at every opportunity yet has said absolutely nothing about the publishers who continue to publish his pro-Sai books! Apparently Priddy has done nothing to convince his publisher Samuel Weiser that his anti-Sai agenda is credible in any way. Nor does Priddy bash and trash Amazon who is selling his book:
In 2003 Robert Priddy scrubbed (Ref:1,Ref:2) his online autobiographical book Through Times' Lens after I found and posted an article he had written called The Psychedelic Experience. I was pointing out the high incidence of histories of drug and/or alcohol abuse in anti-Sai apostates such as Tal Brooke, Conny Larsson, Robert Priddy, Tony O'Clery and Mary Garden. I have since added mental illness, particularly schizophrenia (possibly drug or alcohol induced) and pathological lying (Ref.) to this observation after documenting the numerous lies of anti-Sai activists and suspicious accusations by several male accusers (Keith Ord, Ullrich Zimmermann, Alaya Rahm and Neptune) who claim Sai Baba's genitalia supernaturally morphed from male to female. Rationalists such as the atheist Premanand, who demand the highest ethical, scientific and legal standards from everyone but themselves, continually deride others for lacking in critical thinking skills. These self-appointed 'rationalist thought police' have remained totally mum about these utterly ridiculous claims and even endorse anti-Sai activists such as Conny Larsson, Barry Pittard, Robert Priddy and Sanjay Dadlani who for years have blatantly lied, harassed and intimidated others who have addressed their inconsistencies. In the anti-Sai group, lying seems to be an orally transmitted malady often accompanied by verbal diarrhea and other attention-seeking behaviors!
Premanand, who demands the Sai organisation "open their books" and even posted Sai Organisation Trust Deeds on his website, should open his own books to the general public so they can see just how much money Premanand has made propagandizing against Sai Baba and whether he has been funded
(Ref.) by CSICOP and its founder Paul Kurtz who also founded Prometheus Books so he could publish his own books in order to advance his atheistic views under the guise of Humanism. After all, it was Premanand who stated in his 1989 sceptic newsletter, "If Christianity cannot stand criticism and reason, then it is worthless." Perhaps Premanand should substitute the word "rationalism" for "Christianity" and see if he can follow his own advice.
When Premanand claimed he received a letter (Vol. 12 No. 4 August 1999 of Indian Skeptic) from a student alleging molestation, instead of turning that alleged information over to the police (the mandatory reporting the anti-Sais continually give only lip service to) so law enforcement could investigate, Premanand instead wrote a letter to the Vice Chancellor demanding the Vice Chancellor let him question students and then made money off of the alleged info by publishing numerous anti-Sai Baba articles in his skeptic newsletter (and even demanded that the Vice Chancellor put copies of his skeptic newsletter in the student's library)! When the Vice Chancellor did not respond to Premanand's letter Premanand wrote in his newsletter, "As no reply has been received we have to presume that the experiences of the student is correct which we are publishing “Betrayal by Sai Baba." It is necessary that the alleged abuse of the students by Sai Baba should be investigated by a neutral [as if Premanand is neutral!] committee by getting the addresses of the students who have studied in the Educational Institutions run by Sai Baba and if it is true take criminal proceedings."
Is this the behavior of a citizen who REALLY cares whether students are being molested? Premanand has done absolutely nothing to prove sexual abuse by Sai Baba. All Premanand has done is use the anonymous and suspicious info for years in his campaign to make money smearing Sai Baba. In other words, Premanand has taken the so-called rationalists for a ride on a circuitous journey leading straight back into Premanand's pocketbook. As they say in the investigative field, follow the money.
Why a school dropout like Premanand is fronting for an atheistic organisation which deceitfully claims 'scientific' investigations of the paranormal (something they do not even believe in) remains unknown. How can one 'scientifically' investigate something one does not believe in and, in fact, has a known bias against? And just when are the "rationalists" going to call Premanand on the carpet for his dishonest and tasteless tactics? Or are the 'white guys' like Randi and Kurtz content to let Premanand make a fool of himself in the name of racism, all the while laughing behind his back?
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--James Randi, 'Skeptic'
©2008Lisa De Witt
In the Nov 2007 Volume 20; No.07 (dated 15-11-2007) issue of his Indian Skeptic Magazine, Premanand tries to pass off a fraudulent black and white photo of Sathya Sai Baba with Idi Amin, who was born in 1925 and died in 2003. This tampered photo is eerily similar to one copyrighted and published in the online RadioSai Newsletter in February 2006 with the caption...Dr G Venkataraman (left) and Sri K. Chakravarthi with Swami after the ceremony.
It is obvious that Chakravarthi's image was replaced with Idi Amin who would actually be a year older than then 81 year old Sai Baba if Amin were still alive. The only time Sai Baba traveled to Uganda was in 1968 when he visited devotees, one of which was then Major General Idi Amin's doctor, a Dr. Patel. At that time, Sai Baba advised both Dr. Patel and a Dr. Gadhia to leave the country. A few years later Amin staged a coup and became dictator, eventually expelling all Asians and massacring countless civilians.
In February 2007, Robert Priddy had posted a color copy of the very same composite on his blog (Ref.) with an article about Idi Amin. In true paranoid form, the great intellectual giant Priddy ignorantly implies Sai Baba went to Uganda to hold 'secret meetings' with Amin to convince him to delay the expulsion of Asians when Amin was not even dictator yet! One can see Priddy's attempt to lie about and distort the well-documented accounts of both Patel and Gadhia as to Sai Baba's reason for visiting Uganda. On one hand, Priddy mocks devotees' stories about Amin and then tries to pass them off as being legitimate, showing his inability to discern between fact and fiction or gossip. Priddy also believes Ullrich Zimmermann
(Ref.), Keith Ord, Alaya Rahm and Neptune who claim to have seen Sai Baba's genitalia supernaturally morph from male to female! Far be it for Priddy to mock others for what he deems devotees' 'gullibility' when he cannot even resolve his own hypocrisy, contradictions, rationalizations and equivocations which point toward his own very deep-seated confusion. Like Barry Pittard, Priddy hides out on the internet where he can insulate himself from having to answer questions about these issues.
Basava Premanand has resorted in the November 2007 issue to publishing no less than nine articles either written by or about discredited anti-Sai extremist and apostate, Robert Priddy. The very shady British-born Priddy, whose legal birth name was Robin Crichton Priddy, wrote a pro-Sai Baba book published by Samuel Weiser in 1997, republished by Sai Towers in 1999-2000 (Ref.) and as far as I know is still being sold in the ashram bookstore to this day. In Source of the Dream Priddy claimed, among other miracles, that Sai Baba healed his very debilitating spinal abnormality in a series of dream operations. Priddy has since refused to answer my questions regarding his glaring contradictions. On Robert Priddy's website, he lists the initial date of publication of his pro-Sai Baba book, Source of the Dream as sometime in 1994 (1st ed., Bangalore - out of print)(Ref.). This is very important since Robert Priddy has also provided his alleged diary notes from March, 1994 in which he entered the following
information about his chronic back problem:
SUNDAY 27/3/94 (Bhajan all day)
Afternoon darshan: Sat in chair at back. He came down to the last block and looked in my direction – but did not fixate gaze on me. [Same way?]
I had back problems again.
Below this entry, Priddy has tried recently to explain away his contradictory claim (which I have pressed him about) in his book, Source of the Dream that his back was healed by Sai Baba in a series of dream operations.
Priddy writes the following comment in blue below the above diary entry:
Comment: Once I had thought that Sai Baba had helped cure my spinal misalignment problems - caused by several falls from childhood onwards - especially though[sic] a dream. I later realised, when the problems returned and got worse, that it had just been some temporary placebo effect.
In a recent blog post, Priddy continues to dig his hole even deeper with the following statement (Ref.),
I should add that I have never received any kind of homosexual suggestion in my meetings with Sai Baba, nor in any of the several hundred dreams I have recorded in which he has figured prominently. Once he put his lips to my mouth, at which I felt disgust, but he instead seemed to such[sic] out of my spine something which was causing the spinal problems I suffered from since the age of 40-odd. It was made clear in the dream that it was not a kiss even, but some kind of therapy. Strangely, some years later I was with Sai leaders after a conference in Denmark when I told of this and the wife of the leader in Austria said she had experienced EXACTLY the same. She too had spinal problems after falling down a flight of stairs. I can’t explain this other than by the machinations of unconscious wish fulfillment of hoping to be cured, but I can say that there was no improvement in either of our conditions afterwards. (I was born with spina bifida okulta).
Apparently Priddy does not realize he just provided in written evidence his own admission that his back problem was not "cured" as he claims in his book which was also published that year and for which he received a disability pension in 1985. Thus, we are left to believe Priddy intentionally committed fraud in Source of the Dream when he claimed his back was healed by a series of dream operations.
In Source of the Dream Priddy claimed the following conversation took place between him and an Osteopath. This June 1987 event was apparently proceeded by a dream operation in November 1986.
Almost at once he claimed that neither of the two sets of my X rays from different years were mine, because in them the lower spine was in a much more serious condition than I proved to have when he examined it physically. It showed an excessive curvature and a lower vertebra that was badly and permanently displaced. He was even surprised that I was able to walk about with it! Without any comment whatsoever from me he remarked, ‘I would have staked my professional reputation that these X rays are not yours!’ However, my name was photographed into each one. He asked me what on earth I had been doing - how the great improvement in my spine was achieved. I told him I had hardly been able to walk much of the time, let alone exercise. He shook his head and said, most perplexed, that anyway there was simply no method or exercises he knew whereby I could have made the condition so much better...It was not until afterward that I remembered the dream of the operation ‘under anesthesia’ and the bandages on my thighs and mid-riff on either side of the crisis point in my lower spine! Before the ‘rat in the drum’ episode I had even been unable to walk about the house for long without having to lie down. Yet within a month I had gone to India, sitting on airplanes and walking for hours in a day without more than a few tensions! Though I had felt sure that Baba was helping me, I had not realized how radical a change this had required to my anatomy!(Source Of The Dream, 1999 ed.; “Enigmas of Suffering and Healing”; pp: 179, 181)
However, in April 1989, Narasimhan wrote in a letter to Priddy (Ref.),
As regards the dreams related by you they are certainly significant although it may not be easy to make out precisely what they mean in relation to the future.
I do hope that by Bhagavan's grace you will soon get over your spinal trouble. I presume you are making regular use of Swami's vibhuti.
Compounding this situation is the fact that Robert Priddy then went to another publisher, Samuel Weiser and had this claim republished in 1997! Then he had it republished again in 2000 by Sai Towers before he defected and only THEN began suspiciously retracting his claim of being healed when it served his agenda.
In acts of desperation and vindictiveness, Priddy has used his keyboard-dripping malice to spout many unverifiable and wholly unbelievable claims and outright lies such as one about me being banned from Wikipedia. Even after making a public retraction in 2006, Priddy used the pseudonym 'bandbox' to spread the same lie in 2007
(Ref.). Priddy is now also spreading this lie on his blog. Of course, Robert Priddy does not tell people that he and Barry Pittard were banned from both Digg and Netscape for their hate-filled diatribes. The ultra-devotee turned polemicist has recently penned a Baba-bashing book, End of the Dream, published by none other than the atheist Basava Premanand. Nothing like making money on both ends eh Robert? Priddy has posted the following document on his website showing he received 8%/10% royalties from over 2000 copies of his pro-Sai Baba book as late as 2002 (Ref.).
It is important to note that while Priddy bashes and trashes the Sai organisation on a daily basis, he continues to plug his book Source of the Dream at every opportunity yet has said absolutely nothing about the publishers who continue to publish his pro-Sai books! Apparently Priddy has done nothing to convince his publisher Samuel Weiser that his anti-Sai agenda is credible in any way. Nor does Priddy bash and trash Amazon who is selling his book:
In 2003 Robert Priddy scrubbed (Ref:1,Ref:2) his online autobiographical book Through Times' Lens after I found and posted an article he had written called The Psychedelic Experience. I was pointing out the high incidence of histories of drug and/or alcohol abuse in anti-Sai apostates such as Tal Brooke, Conny Larsson, Robert Priddy, Tony O'Clery and Mary Garden. I have since added mental illness, particularly schizophrenia (possibly drug or alcohol induced) and pathological lying (Ref.) to this observation after documenting the numerous lies of anti-Sai activists and suspicious accusations by several male accusers (Keith Ord, Ullrich Zimmermann, Alaya Rahm and Neptune) who claim Sai Baba's genitalia supernaturally morphed from male to female. Rationalists such as the atheist Premanand, who demand the highest ethical, scientific and legal standards from everyone but themselves, continually deride others for lacking in critical thinking skills. These self-appointed 'rationalist thought police' have remained totally mum about these utterly ridiculous claims and even endorse anti-Sai activists such as Conny Larsson, Barry Pittard, Robert Priddy and Sanjay Dadlani who for years have blatantly lied, harassed and intimidated others who have addressed their inconsistencies. In the anti-Sai group, lying seems to be an orally transmitted malady often accompanied by verbal diarrhea and other attention-seeking behaviors!
Premanand, who demands the Sai organisation "open their books" and even posted Sai Organisation Trust Deeds on his website, should open his own books to the general public so they can see just how much money Premanand has made propagandizing against Sai Baba and whether he has been funded
(Ref.) by CSICOP and its founder Paul Kurtz who also founded Prometheus Books so he could publish his own books in order to advance his atheistic views under the guise of Humanism. After all, it was Premanand who stated in his 1989 sceptic newsletter, "If Christianity cannot stand criticism and reason, then it is worthless." Perhaps Premanand should substitute the word "rationalism" for "Christianity" and see if he can follow his own advice.
When Premanand claimed he received a letter (Vol. 12 No. 4 August 1999 of Indian Skeptic) from a student alleging molestation, instead of turning that alleged information over to the police (the mandatory reporting the anti-Sais continually give only lip service to) so law enforcement could investigate, Premanand instead wrote a letter to the Vice Chancellor demanding the Vice Chancellor let him question students and then made money off of the alleged info by publishing numerous anti-Sai Baba articles in his skeptic newsletter (and even demanded that the Vice Chancellor put copies of his skeptic newsletter in the student's library)! When the Vice Chancellor did not respond to Premanand's letter Premanand wrote in his newsletter, "As no reply has been received we have to presume that the experiences of the student is correct which we are publishing “Betrayal by Sai Baba." It is necessary that the alleged abuse of the students by Sai Baba should be investigated by a neutral [as if Premanand is neutral!] committee by getting the addresses of the students who have studied in the Educational Institutions run by Sai Baba and if it is true take criminal proceedings."
Is this the behavior of a citizen who REALLY cares whether students are being molested? Premanand has done absolutely nothing to prove sexual abuse by Sai Baba. All Premanand has done is use the anonymous and suspicious info for years in his campaign to make money smearing Sai Baba. In other words, Premanand has taken the so-called rationalists for a ride on a circuitous journey leading straight back into Premanand's pocketbook. As they say in the investigative field, follow the money.
Why a school dropout like Premanand is fronting for an atheistic organisation which deceitfully claims 'scientific' investigations of the paranormal (something they do not even believe in) remains unknown. How can one 'scientifically' investigate something one does not believe in and, in fact, has a known bias against? And just when are the "rationalists" going to call Premanand on the carpet for his dishonest and tasteless tactics? Or are the 'white guys' like Randi and Kurtz content to let Premanand make a fool of himself in the name of racism, all the while laughing behind his back?
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Saturday, December 08, 2007
Rick Ross, not the brightest bulb
©2007Lisa DeWitt
It is disturbing to see that there are so many in the anti-cult camp who do not believe in the due process of law. Rick Ross is one of them. Like many ignorant people on the internet, Ross believes that Sathya Sai Baba can and should be tried and convicted based on inaccurate, misleading newspaper articles and public opinion. In fact, Ross believes his opinion is so important he does not need to do any research or listen to anyone, even the law. Like other critical websites, Ross does not allow rebuttals or links to other sites which refute his disinformation. This attitude would not surprise those who know Ross has a previous criminal history for theft and kidnapping. What is even more troubling about Ross's attitude is that he states on his website that there should be legislation in order to force deprogramming on those he and other anti-cultists deem necessary. Yes, Ross wants to make kidnapping 'legal'. This from a man who barely finished high school, has no education or interest in counseling and who believes people should be tried and convicted over the internet based on accusations from people who have engaged in internet smear campaigns but never filed, nor even attempted to file charges and whose claims have exceeded the time limits according to the statute of limitations laws in India. Yet Ross calls himself an "exit counselor".
Tell me something isn't wrong with this picture.
When anti-cultists can smear people over the internet for years on end with misinformation, innuendo, gossip and criminal accusations for crimes they have never been charged with much less prosecuted for, anti-cultists become dangerous and cult-like in their religious intolerance and inability to distinguish between fact and fiction.
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