Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
zelig
()
Date: April 20, 2007 10:52AM
Thanks Goog,
"You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time". -Abraham Lincoln
"You can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time". -Abraham Lincoln
Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
zelig
()
Date: April 20, 2007 11:12AM
Wanted to share this article that just came out in a British science journal ----
"No matter how freethinking you believe yourself to be, says Michael Bond, being part of a group can make you do stupid or even despicable things"
[b:01a9830bd4]THEY MADE ME DO IT[/b:01a9830bd4]
* 11 April 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* by Michael Bond
As aniconic image of human rights abuse, it is hard to equal: a hooded man with electrodes attached to his fingers stands precariously on a small box. One slip and he risks a numbing electric shock. In April 2004 this picture and others showing American soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad cast a pall over the US military's conduct in Iraq that has never lifted. The electrode stunt was dreamed up by a group of US army reservists working as military policemen at the prison. Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick was one of them. It was not the only abuse he perpetrated at Abu Ghraib. Among other things, he admitted making three prisoners masturbate while his colleagues looked on, and thumping another so hard in the chest that he had to be resuscitated. Most people would label Frederick as morally corrupt, a classic "bad apple". The judge at his trial certainly did. He sentenced him to eight years in jail, handed down a dishonourable discharge, and removed his salary and pension. Frederick deserved severe punishment, the judge argued, because he was exercising free will when he committed the acts. But was he?
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo from Stanford University in California thinks not. He believes the judge was guilty of the "fundamental attribution error" - overestimating the effects of someone's temperament on their behaviour and underestimating the effects of the environment in which they were acting. Zimbardo was an expert witness on Frederick's defence team. He interviewed him at length before the trial and carried out extensive psychological tests. He found no hint of mental illness or sadistic tendencies in Frederick. "In many ways this soldier was an American icon: a good husband, father and worker, patriotic, religious, with many friends and a history of having lived a most normal, moral small town life," says Zimbardo. Then he went to Abu Ghraib and turned into a monster.
This may be an extreme case, but such transformations are surprisingly common. You find them in just about any environment in which an individual is subsumed into a group or is reacting to what others are doing: rioting mobs, football crowds, committees, social networks, even panels of judges. In such situations a group mentality can easily take over, leading people to act out of character or adopt extreme or risky positions. In an analysis that considered 25,000 social psychology studies, published a few months after the Abu Ghraib abuses emerged, Susan Fiske at Princeton University concluded that almost everyone is capable of torture and other evil acts if placed in the wrong social context (Science, vol 306, p 1482). "Our society tends to focus on individual psychology," says Zimbardo. "All our institutions - in war, law, religion, medicine - are based on this concept." Yet if we don't understand the power of group psychology we can never hope to combat evils such as torture, suicide bombings and genocide, or indeed avoid making bad decisions or committing despicable acts of our own.
“Almost everyone is capable of evil acts if placed in the wrong social context”
Zimbardo has famously shown how easy it is to turn peaceful people abusive and hostile. In an experiment at Stanford University in 1971, he recruited students to imitate prison guards and inmates. After six days the experiment had to be stopped because the guards - ordinary summer-school students selected for their healthy psychological state - had pushed many of the prisoners to the point of emotional breakdown. In a similar experiment published in 1974, Stanley Milgram from Yale University persuaded ordinary people to administer electric shocks to a "victim" sitting behind a screen. Without much trouble Milgram had all of them increasing the voltage until the victim was screaming (it was an act but they didn't know that). Two-thirds of them carried on until the victim was apparently unconscious.
"If you can diffuse responsibility so people don't feel accountable, they will probably do things they normally never would," says Zimbardo. Milgram did this by telling the participants that he was in charge, and that he himself would take responsibility for anything that happened. Zimbardo gave his "prison guards" all the symbols of power of real guards - uniforms, whistles, handcuffs, sunglasses - effectively giving the volunteers permission to behave like them. He also ensured that prisoners were known only by numbers, not by their names. Many studies have found such anonymity to be an effective tool for changing the way someone is treated, or how they treat others. You find the same effect outside the lab. In 1971, anthropologist John Watson from Harvard University found that tribal cultures renowned for their barbaric treatment of enemies usually wear masks or paint their faces when going into battle, while those who go to war unadorned tend to be far less brutal. Likewise, many commentators have observed that people perpetrating crimes such as torture and genocide often dehumanise their victims by thinking of them as animals. Following on from Milgram's experiment, Albert Bandura from Stanford University found that people would administer more severe electric shocks if he told them that the recipients (whom they could not see) seemed "like animals".
Personal allegiance
Groups can create environments that diminish individual responsibility, but they can also exert their hold in another way. "There is a significant difference between mob behaviour, in which anonymity and imitation are the important factors, and the direct influence of a group, which involves personal allegiance to leaders and comrades," says Ariel Merari, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel and an expert on Middle Eastern terrorism. Groups that recruit suicide bombers are among those that use the latter approach, building a sense of community and encouraging feelings of responsibility towards other group members: the "brotherhood mentality". Here, individuals take responsibility for their own actions within a culture where suicide bombing is seen as glorious. Then, by recording farewell messages to family and friends either on videotape or in writing, they make a commitment to their own martyrdom that they cannot renege on without losing face (New Scientist, 15 May 2004, p 34).
All of this is a long way from the situations that most of us face. Yet many of the decisions we make every day are heavily influenced by what others are doing. In a study published last year, for example, Duncan Watts and colleagues at Columbia University in New York showed that the reason chart-topping pop songs are so much more popular than average is not because they are significantly better but because consumers are influenced by the buying habits of others (Science, vol 311, p 854). This is known as the social cascade effect, a phenomenon in which large numbers of people end up doing or thinking something on the basis of what others have done.
There are two mechanisms at work here, says Watts. "The first is social learning. The world is too complicated for each individual to solve problems on their own, so we rely on the information that is encoded in our social environment - we assume other people know things we don't." Then there is social coordination, where you want to do the same thing as other people not because you think it is better but because what matters is doing things together. "Liking the same song, movies, sports and books not only gives us something to talk about, but makes us feel like we're part of something larger than ourselves." As well as directing consumers' buying habits, these two forces can influence financial markets, protest movements, and even - through opinion polls - how we vote.
It is not surprising that people should be so susceptible to the dynamics of their social environment. After all, we evolved as social animals in environments where cooperation and group cohesion were key survival tools. Our reasons for being influenced by others are often valid, but if we are not careful this tendency can get us into trouble. In a classic study carried out in the 1950s, for example, social psychologist Solomon Asch revealed how the peer pressure associated with being part of a group can lead people to deny the evidence of their own senses. When asked simply to match the length of a line on a card with one of three reference lines, 70 per cent of his subjects ignored their own judgement and sided with the rest of their group who, unbeknown to them, had been primed to make a blatantly wrong choice.
When any group of like-minded people get together, the result can be equally alarming. One common effect is that the group ends up taking a more extreme position than the one its members started with - it becomes polarised. For example, a group of people who begin a discussion believing George Bush's policies on Iraq are merely ill-advised may finish convinced that his policies are insane. Cass Sunstein, professor of law and political science at the University of Chicago has identified two reasons. First, in like-minded groups you tend to hear only arguments that support your own viewpoint, which is bound to reinforce it. In addition, people are always comparing themselves with others and will shift their position so as not to appear out of line. The same kind of thinking is behind the phenomenon known as "risky shift" in which adolescents, already prone to risky behaviour, are even more inclined to throw caution to the wind when they are with their peers.
Polarisation is related to another form of group psychology known as groupthink, where members strive for cohesion at the expense of all else. Maintaining cohesion can give a group a sense of power and bolster the self-esteem of its members, but it can also lead them to make bad and dangerous decisions. "When group cohesion is based on congeniality, criticising ideas means attacking the source of group cohesion," says Clark McCauley, director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. As with social cascades and polarisation, problems often arise when people rely on what they think others know and fail to share useful information they might have. This mistake can be compounded by the influence of a manipulative leader. Groupthink has been blamed for the CIA's flawed plan to invade Cuba in 1961 - the infamous Bay of Pigs debacle - and also for NASA's failure in 2003 to recognise that the damage done to the wing of the space shuttle Columbia by a piece of foam during take-off was potentially fatal. Irving Janis, the psychologist who coined the term groupthink in 1972, believed no one was immune. "Probably every member of every policy-making group is susceptible," he wrote in a landmark paper.
Another situation in which we are all prone to assuming a strong group mentality is at times of crisis. This explains why support for national leaders increases in wartime - and why George Bush achieved almost unanimous backing for his "war on terror" after 9/11. It is understandable that people look to their own group when they feel threatened, but the result can be an escalation of tension. In a study published last year, for example, a team led by Tom Pyszczynski from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, found that Iranian college students who were prompted to think about their own death showed greater support for suicide attacks against the US than they would have otherwise (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 32, p 1).
Knowing what we do about group psychology, what are the lessons to be learned? For a start, we should discourage isolated cliques of like-minded people and encourage people with opposing views to speak out - and that applies whether you are trying to prevent terrorism or elect a new school head. The flip side of this is that we should recognise that extremist groups are usually remarkably homogenous in terms of the interests, political affiliations, age and socioeconomic status of their members. "If I were an intelligence agent trying to break a terrorist cell, if I caught one member I'd find out what food he eats and what clothing he wears," says Scott Atran at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The chances are his fellow terrorists would have very similar preferences. Accordingly, Atran and forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman are building a database of members of jihadi terrorist networks in Europe and Asia, recording information such as family background and friends.
Another lesson is that the wider social environment influences the decisions made by groups. Pyszczynski found that he could change the attitudes of his Iranian students by convincing them that public opinion in their country was opposed to suicide attacks. What's more, in similar studies with US students he first increased their appetite for conflict with Arabs by getting them to think of their own death, and then found he could reduce it simply by showing them photos of family life from many different cultures or reminding them of their own group values, such as compassion, and of what they have in common with others. "This is particularly encouraging as it shows a way of reversing a process that otherwise can increase public support for terrorism," he says.
The behaviour of football hooligans can also be influenced by their social environment, according to Clifford Stott, a social psychologist at the University of Liverpool, UK. Working as a consultant to the police for the European championships in Portugal in 2004, he found that the aggressiveness of football crowds is heavily influenced by how the police treat them. Although violence has been part of the group identity of a significant section of England fans, low-profile policing at certain matches during Euro2004 encouraged them to adopt an uncharacteristically orderly attitude which they then maintained through self-policing (European Journal of Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.338).
The idea of group psychology is rather unsettling. We like to think that we are in control of our own decisions and behaviour, not at the mercy of our social environment. It is also deeply disturbing to contemplate that any of us might have done what Frederick and the other Abu Ghraib reservists did. Yet Zimbardo also points to a positive side. His latest research looks at what makes a hero, and he has found that our universal capacity to perform evil acts under the influence of the group is matched by a universal capacity to resist peer pressure and do the right thing. "There is nothing special in the backgrounds of heroes - they choose to act on the moment. There are no predictive psychological factors," says Zimbardo. Ordinary heroes, like ordinary monsters, are everywhere.
Joseph Darby is a perfect example. He was an army reservist in the same company as Frederick, and the person responsible for stopping the torture and human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. Darby passed a CD of the photographs to his superior officer. He did this despite the severe potential costs to himself and his family, who are now in hiding for fear of retaliation from members of his unit. Zimbardo looked into Darby's background. "Ordinary," he says. "He never did anything like it before."
[b:01a9830bd4]From issue 2599 of New Scientist magazine, 11 April 2007, page 42-45[/b:01a9830bd4]
"No matter how freethinking you believe yourself to be, says Michael Bond, being part of a group can make you do stupid or even despicable things"
[b:01a9830bd4]THEY MADE ME DO IT[/b:01a9830bd4]
* 11 April 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* by Michael Bond
As aniconic image of human rights abuse, it is hard to equal: a hooded man with electrodes attached to his fingers stands precariously on a small box. One slip and he risks a numbing electric shock. In April 2004 this picture and others showing American soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad cast a pall over the US military's conduct in Iraq that has never lifted. The electrode stunt was dreamed up by a group of US army reservists working as military policemen at the prison. Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick was one of them. It was not the only abuse he perpetrated at Abu Ghraib. Among other things, he admitted making three prisoners masturbate while his colleagues looked on, and thumping another so hard in the chest that he had to be resuscitated. Most people would label Frederick as morally corrupt, a classic "bad apple". The judge at his trial certainly did. He sentenced him to eight years in jail, handed down a dishonourable discharge, and removed his salary and pension. Frederick deserved severe punishment, the judge argued, because he was exercising free will when he committed the acts. But was he?
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo from Stanford University in California thinks not. He believes the judge was guilty of the "fundamental attribution error" - overestimating the effects of someone's temperament on their behaviour and underestimating the effects of the environment in which they were acting. Zimbardo was an expert witness on Frederick's defence team. He interviewed him at length before the trial and carried out extensive psychological tests. He found no hint of mental illness or sadistic tendencies in Frederick. "In many ways this soldier was an American icon: a good husband, father and worker, patriotic, religious, with many friends and a history of having lived a most normal, moral small town life," says Zimbardo. Then he went to Abu Ghraib and turned into a monster.
This may be an extreme case, but such transformations are surprisingly common. You find them in just about any environment in which an individual is subsumed into a group or is reacting to what others are doing: rioting mobs, football crowds, committees, social networks, even panels of judges. In such situations a group mentality can easily take over, leading people to act out of character or adopt extreme or risky positions. In an analysis that considered 25,000 social psychology studies, published a few months after the Abu Ghraib abuses emerged, Susan Fiske at Princeton University concluded that almost everyone is capable of torture and other evil acts if placed in the wrong social context (Science, vol 306, p 1482). "Our society tends to focus on individual psychology," says Zimbardo. "All our institutions - in war, law, religion, medicine - are based on this concept." Yet if we don't understand the power of group psychology we can never hope to combat evils such as torture, suicide bombings and genocide, or indeed avoid making bad decisions or committing despicable acts of our own.
“Almost everyone is capable of evil acts if placed in the wrong social context”
Zimbardo has famously shown how easy it is to turn peaceful people abusive and hostile. In an experiment at Stanford University in 1971, he recruited students to imitate prison guards and inmates. After six days the experiment had to be stopped because the guards - ordinary summer-school students selected for their healthy psychological state - had pushed many of the prisoners to the point of emotional breakdown. In a similar experiment published in 1974, Stanley Milgram from Yale University persuaded ordinary people to administer electric shocks to a "victim" sitting behind a screen. Without much trouble Milgram had all of them increasing the voltage until the victim was screaming (it was an act but they didn't know that). Two-thirds of them carried on until the victim was apparently unconscious.
"If you can diffuse responsibility so people don't feel accountable, they will probably do things they normally never would," says Zimbardo. Milgram did this by telling the participants that he was in charge, and that he himself would take responsibility for anything that happened. Zimbardo gave his "prison guards" all the symbols of power of real guards - uniforms, whistles, handcuffs, sunglasses - effectively giving the volunteers permission to behave like them. He also ensured that prisoners were known only by numbers, not by their names. Many studies have found such anonymity to be an effective tool for changing the way someone is treated, or how they treat others. You find the same effect outside the lab. In 1971, anthropologist John Watson from Harvard University found that tribal cultures renowned for their barbaric treatment of enemies usually wear masks or paint their faces when going into battle, while those who go to war unadorned tend to be far less brutal. Likewise, many commentators have observed that people perpetrating crimes such as torture and genocide often dehumanise their victims by thinking of them as animals. Following on from Milgram's experiment, Albert Bandura from Stanford University found that people would administer more severe electric shocks if he told them that the recipients (whom they could not see) seemed "like animals".
Personal allegiance
Groups can create environments that diminish individual responsibility, but they can also exert their hold in another way. "There is a significant difference between mob behaviour, in which anonymity and imitation are the important factors, and the direct influence of a group, which involves personal allegiance to leaders and comrades," says Ariel Merari, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel and an expert on Middle Eastern terrorism. Groups that recruit suicide bombers are among those that use the latter approach, building a sense of community and encouraging feelings of responsibility towards other group members: the "brotherhood mentality". Here, individuals take responsibility for their own actions within a culture where suicide bombing is seen as glorious. Then, by recording farewell messages to family and friends either on videotape or in writing, they make a commitment to their own martyrdom that they cannot renege on without losing face (New Scientist, 15 May 2004, p 34).
All of this is a long way from the situations that most of us face. Yet many of the decisions we make every day are heavily influenced by what others are doing. In a study published last year, for example, Duncan Watts and colleagues at Columbia University in New York showed that the reason chart-topping pop songs are so much more popular than average is not because they are significantly better but because consumers are influenced by the buying habits of others (Science, vol 311, p 854). This is known as the social cascade effect, a phenomenon in which large numbers of people end up doing or thinking something on the basis of what others have done.
There are two mechanisms at work here, says Watts. "The first is social learning. The world is too complicated for each individual to solve problems on their own, so we rely on the information that is encoded in our social environment - we assume other people know things we don't." Then there is social coordination, where you want to do the same thing as other people not because you think it is better but because what matters is doing things together. "Liking the same song, movies, sports and books not only gives us something to talk about, but makes us feel like we're part of something larger than ourselves." As well as directing consumers' buying habits, these two forces can influence financial markets, protest movements, and even - through opinion polls - how we vote.
It is not surprising that people should be so susceptible to the dynamics of their social environment. After all, we evolved as social animals in environments where cooperation and group cohesion were key survival tools. Our reasons for being influenced by others are often valid, but if we are not careful this tendency can get us into trouble. In a classic study carried out in the 1950s, for example, social psychologist Solomon Asch revealed how the peer pressure associated with being part of a group can lead people to deny the evidence of their own senses. When asked simply to match the length of a line on a card with one of three reference lines, 70 per cent of his subjects ignored their own judgement and sided with the rest of their group who, unbeknown to them, had been primed to make a blatantly wrong choice.
When any group of like-minded people get together, the result can be equally alarming. One common effect is that the group ends up taking a more extreme position than the one its members started with - it becomes polarised. For example, a group of people who begin a discussion believing George Bush's policies on Iraq are merely ill-advised may finish convinced that his policies are insane. Cass Sunstein, professor of law and political science at the University of Chicago has identified two reasons. First, in like-minded groups you tend to hear only arguments that support your own viewpoint, which is bound to reinforce it. In addition, people are always comparing themselves with others and will shift their position so as not to appear out of line. The same kind of thinking is behind the phenomenon known as "risky shift" in which adolescents, already prone to risky behaviour, are even more inclined to throw caution to the wind when they are with their peers.
Polarisation is related to another form of group psychology known as groupthink, where members strive for cohesion at the expense of all else. Maintaining cohesion can give a group a sense of power and bolster the self-esteem of its members, but it can also lead them to make bad and dangerous decisions. "When group cohesion is based on congeniality, criticising ideas means attacking the source of group cohesion," says Clark McCauley, director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. As with social cascades and polarisation, problems often arise when people rely on what they think others know and fail to share useful information they might have. This mistake can be compounded by the influence of a manipulative leader. Groupthink has been blamed for the CIA's flawed plan to invade Cuba in 1961 - the infamous Bay of Pigs debacle - and also for NASA's failure in 2003 to recognise that the damage done to the wing of the space shuttle Columbia by a piece of foam during take-off was potentially fatal. Irving Janis, the psychologist who coined the term groupthink in 1972, believed no one was immune. "Probably every member of every policy-making group is susceptible," he wrote in a landmark paper.
Another situation in which we are all prone to assuming a strong group mentality is at times of crisis. This explains why support for national leaders increases in wartime - and why George Bush achieved almost unanimous backing for his "war on terror" after 9/11. It is understandable that people look to their own group when they feel threatened, but the result can be an escalation of tension. In a study published last year, for example, a team led by Tom Pyszczynski from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, found that Iranian college students who were prompted to think about their own death showed greater support for suicide attacks against the US than they would have otherwise (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 32, p 1).
Knowing what we do about group psychology, what are the lessons to be learned? For a start, we should discourage isolated cliques of like-minded people and encourage people with opposing views to speak out - and that applies whether you are trying to prevent terrorism or elect a new school head. The flip side of this is that we should recognise that extremist groups are usually remarkably homogenous in terms of the interests, political affiliations, age and socioeconomic status of their members. "If I were an intelligence agent trying to break a terrorist cell, if I caught one member I'd find out what food he eats and what clothing he wears," says Scott Atran at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The chances are his fellow terrorists would have very similar preferences. Accordingly, Atran and forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman are building a database of members of jihadi terrorist networks in Europe and Asia, recording information such as family background and friends.
Another lesson is that the wider social environment influences the decisions made by groups. Pyszczynski found that he could change the attitudes of his Iranian students by convincing them that public opinion in their country was opposed to suicide attacks. What's more, in similar studies with US students he first increased their appetite for conflict with Arabs by getting them to think of their own death, and then found he could reduce it simply by showing them photos of family life from many different cultures or reminding them of their own group values, such as compassion, and of what they have in common with others. "This is particularly encouraging as it shows a way of reversing a process that otherwise can increase public support for terrorism," he says.
The behaviour of football hooligans can also be influenced by their social environment, according to Clifford Stott, a social psychologist at the University of Liverpool, UK. Working as a consultant to the police for the European championships in Portugal in 2004, he found that the aggressiveness of football crowds is heavily influenced by how the police treat them. Although violence has been part of the group identity of a significant section of England fans, low-profile policing at certain matches during Euro2004 encouraged them to adopt an uncharacteristically orderly attitude which they then maintained through self-policing (European Journal of Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.338).
The idea of group psychology is rather unsettling. We like to think that we are in control of our own decisions and behaviour, not at the mercy of our social environment. It is also deeply disturbing to contemplate that any of us might have done what Frederick and the other Abu Ghraib reservists did. Yet Zimbardo also points to a positive side. His latest research looks at what makes a hero, and he has found that our universal capacity to perform evil acts under the influence of the group is matched by a universal capacity to resist peer pressure and do the right thing. "There is nothing special in the backgrounds of heroes - they choose to act on the moment. There are no predictive psychological factors," says Zimbardo. Ordinary heroes, like ordinary monsters, are everywhere.
Joseph Darby is a perfect example. He was an army reservist in the same company as Frederick, and the person responsible for stopping the torture and human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. Darby passed a CD of the photographs to his superior officer. He did this despite the severe potential costs to himself and his family, who are now in hiding for fear of retaliation from members of his unit. Zimbardo looked into Darby's background. "Ordinary," he says. "He never did anything like it before."
[b:01a9830bd4]From issue 2599 of New Scientist magazine, 11 April 2007, page 42-45[/b:01a9830bd4]
Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
crass
()
Date: April 20, 2007 01:55PM
Just came across this forum. A lot of research has been done to say the least. Anyway, just wanted to introduce myself and say "hey." I'm more of a reader than a writer. I still haven't read everything here yet.
Later...
Later...
Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
cultreporter
()
Date: April 26, 2007 05:27AM
The name www.chriskcon.com has been sold to a ficticious person and made to point at a stalking website, so it is pretty obvious who is responsible. He wishes - who has been calling me up for the past couple of weeks? It is about time that I got myself a lawyer to see about filing for harrassment and defamation myself.
Also everyone please be aware of anyone who is contacting you with regard to "making a documentary" and looking for information. I am certain that they were trying to get me to give them some names, never posted here and being really puchy about do I know anyone who has a friend or a family member that wants to leave the group that I can put them in touch with and wanting to know my personal details, who do I work for etc I told them I dont give out personal information to people I dont know and that they should post here or on the chriskcon forum where I wouldnt mind if they posted a phone number or email address which is against the rules here.
These people are pathetic - but obviously very scared - as they should be. To be honest without the threats and opposition and stupid tactics (and all the nice people that I have met along the way :) ) I might have given up with my first blog. Now I am starting up my own organisation and have a great idea for a second website.
Sorry to all, but the issue will be sorted out, and I am hopeful that people will find the site again.
Also everyone please be aware of anyone who is contacting you with regard to "making a documentary" and looking for information. I am certain that they were trying to get me to give them some names, never posted here and being really puchy about do I know anyone who has a friend or a family member that wants to leave the group that I can put them in touch with and wanting to know my personal details, who do I work for etc I told them I dont give out personal information to people I dont know and that they should post here or on the chriskcon forum where I wouldnt mind if they posted a phone number or email address which is against the rules here.
These people are pathetic - but obviously very scared - as they should be. To be honest without the threats and opposition and stupid tactics (and all the nice people that I have met along the way :) ) I might have given up with my first blog. Now I am starting up my own organisation and have a great idea for a second website.
Sorry to all, but the issue will be sorted out, and I am hopeful that people will find the site again.
Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
cultreporter
()
Date: April 26, 2007 09:33AM
I know that you dont want it, but we are going to have it anyway.
Posting it here makes it official - I am going to war with Science of Identity - no white flags no oh well there is one thing that is holding me to them and I really want to know the truth.
I dont need to know the truth because I have just found out. I am sure that everyone who has been following my tale of hearache would like to know that my last word to Brendon were "Well what part of I'm going to kick your arses don't you understand fuckhead?" as I slammed shut my little pink phone.
This is the loser that calls me up because obviously he was made to wanting to amend our relationship, imploring me to trust him and denying that he knew anything about anything to hurt me and saying he never even read the site and didnt even think about it. But he wants it down doesnt he? Of course he does. He sweet talks, tells some more lies, I want to believe him. Puts the pressure on well if you are doing things like that I cant even be your friend. Love bombing I believe that it is called.
Then this morning he goes and blurts out about the guy that has attacked and stalked me (which I actually have proof of because it really did happen, unlike his baseless allegations against me) "Didnt you have sex with him anyway?" No I did not - this guy tried to rape me and then he taunted me that I had had sex with him because he guessed correctly that I would be too embarrassed to want to explain what the hell was going on - and because he is a slimy bag of filth. How did he know this? He has never seen the guy doesnt know who he is, then maybe he does, maybe he has seen him and had nothing to do with him. Whatever :roll:
I loved and trusted this guy. I dont trust anyone with the life I have had, especially not men but I adored him, I would do anything for him. I dont know how or why love can be as worthless as it turned out to be, but that is what happened and it is going to be a hell of a book and maybe if I am lucky a tv movie because people like tv movies about cults. Cults are very interesting. This toad sent someone to harrass and threaten me and knew all about it and lied and lied to try to cover it up. He sat there and said I want to be your friend now when he must have hated me so much the whole time to use the feelings that he knew that I had against me like he did and then he tried to shift the blame onto me for what happened.
It is a website - it is well researched, the tech side is in my opinion A grade and some of the content is absolutely hilarious, it has to be to balance out the horrific and sad FACTS - and these people that say they dont even read it because it is offensive want to dismiss it as all lies and say that I am a fanatic for believing that people deserve to know the truth. No way am I taking that - a fanatic is someone that will not/can not change their point of view, despite reason. A fanatic is someone that will cling to a sinking ship despite there being plenty of lifeboats - people that will attack rather than reason and who cant answer questions or criticisms that do exist just keep trying to fool themselves that there is no problem.
I am not a fanatic. I am a cult activist. I am certainly not perfect and I know I have made mistakes and I have shown myself to be emotional at times (which I think is normal unless your name is Chris Butler and someone writes to you about a sick baby) but I will go out there for everyone even if I am standing alone. I want to help people and I want everyone to be able to realise, whether or not they can or want to believe in God or not that Chris Butler is a hoax, a fraud, a liar that does not represent anyone or anything except himself and his own warped views designed to garner worship for HIM. Chris Butler is not Krishna Consciousness and anyone who has been hurt by him or turned away from ever having anything to do with KC because of him deserves the opportunity to know that in my opinion.
So I have made up my mind it is well time to become very serious and I am going to Brisbane tomorrow with my flyers and my sign and my nicest smile and I am going to tell as many people as will listen. I am going to call all the papers and the TV and if they dont call back I am going to call them again. They will come and Chris Butler and his crew will learn the meaning of not being able to put toothpaste back in the tube. The truth can and will be told. If there is anyone that I can help it would be my honour and pleasure to do so and I promise you all that I am working hard not just to keep the exposure coming but to try and help those who have been subjected to spiritual abuse in the cult of Butler.
Just remember Chris friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Posting it here makes it official - I am going to war with Science of Identity - no white flags no oh well there is one thing that is holding me to them and I really want to know the truth.
I dont need to know the truth because I have just found out. I am sure that everyone who has been following my tale of hearache would like to know that my last word to Brendon were "Well what part of I'm going to kick your arses don't you understand fuckhead?" as I slammed shut my little pink phone.
This is the loser that calls me up because obviously he was made to wanting to amend our relationship, imploring me to trust him and denying that he knew anything about anything to hurt me and saying he never even read the site and didnt even think about it. But he wants it down doesnt he? Of course he does. He sweet talks, tells some more lies, I want to believe him. Puts the pressure on well if you are doing things like that I cant even be your friend. Love bombing I believe that it is called.
Then this morning he goes and blurts out about the guy that has attacked and stalked me (which I actually have proof of because it really did happen, unlike his baseless allegations against me) "Didnt you have sex with him anyway?" No I did not - this guy tried to rape me and then he taunted me that I had had sex with him because he guessed correctly that I would be too embarrassed to want to explain what the hell was going on - and because he is a slimy bag of filth. How did he know this? He has never seen the guy doesnt know who he is, then maybe he does, maybe he has seen him and had nothing to do with him. Whatever :roll:
I loved and trusted this guy. I dont trust anyone with the life I have had, especially not men but I adored him, I would do anything for him. I dont know how or why love can be as worthless as it turned out to be, but that is what happened and it is going to be a hell of a book and maybe if I am lucky a tv movie because people like tv movies about cults. Cults are very interesting. This toad sent someone to harrass and threaten me and knew all about it and lied and lied to try to cover it up. He sat there and said I want to be your friend now when he must have hated me so much the whole time to use the feelings that he knew that I had against me like he did and then he tried to shift the blame onto me for what happened.
It is a website - it is well researched, the tech side is in my opinion A grade and some of the content is absolutely hilarious, it has to be to balance out the horrific and sad FACTS - and these people that say they dont even read it because it is offensive want to dismiss it as all lies and say that I am a fanatic for believing that people deserve to know the truth. No way am I taking that - a fanatic is someone that will not/can not change their point of view, despite reason. A fanatic is someone that will cling to a sinking ship despite there being plenty of lifeboats - people that will attack rather than reason and who cant answer questions or criticisms that do exist just keep trying to fool themselves that there is no problem.
I am not a fanatic. I am a cult activist. I am certainly not perfect and I know I have made mistakes and I have shown myself to be emotional at times (which I think is normal unless your name is Chris Butler and someone writes to you about a sick baby) but I will go out there for everyone even if I am standing alone. I want to help people and I want everyone to be able to realise, whether or not they can or want to believe in God or not that Chris Butler is a hoax, a fraud, a liar that does not represent anyone or anything except himself and his own warped views designed to garner worship for HIM. Chris Butler is not Krishna Consciousness and anyone who has been hurt by him or turned away from ever having anything to do with KC because of him deserves the opportunity to know that in my opinion.
So I have made up my mind it is well time to become very serious and I am going to Brisbane tomorrow with my flyers and my sign and my nicest smile and I am going to tell as many people as will listen. I am going to call all the papers and the TV and if they dont call back I am going to call them again. They will come and Chris Butler and his crew will learn the meaning of not being able to put toothpaste back in the tube. The truth can and will be told. If there is anyone that I can help it would be my honour and pleasure to do so and I promise you all that I am working hard not just to keep the exposure coming but to try and help those who have been subjected to spiritual abuse in the cult of Butler.
Just remember Chris friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
atheist
()
Date: May 01, 2007 01:31PM
Sorry that I haven't been writing much. I have had some trouble getting in to the forum.
I just did a search on YouTube of "Jagad Guru" and a song by Chris Butler comes up: Dear Fanatic, Take It Easy.
An interesting thing is that it comes from a website that appears to be run by the Science of Identity Foundation in Hawaii. You can use Whois services to confirm who the owner of the website is.
The URL is
www.jagadgurusiddhaswarupananda.com
I apologize if this is repeated information
I just did a search on YouTube of "Jagad Guru" and a song by Chris Butler comes up: Dear Fanatic, Take It Easy.
An interesting thing is that it comes from a website that appears to be run by the Science of Identity Foundation in Hawaii. You can use Whois services to confirm who the owner of the website is.
The URL is
www.jagadgurusiddhaswarupananda.com
I apologize if this is repeated information
Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
atheist
()
Date: May 02, 2007 12:55AM
I took a closer look at www.jagadgurusiddhaswarupananda.com and found another Science of Identity Foundation website at
[www.scienceofidentityfoundation.org]
These are both recently created websites.
www.jagadgurusiddhaswarupananda.com was created on January 24, 2007
www.scienceofidentityfoundation.org was created on April 4, 2007
All the dates shown on these two websites, that I have seen, are for 2007.
The www.scienceofidentityfoundation.org website mentions that Chris Butler is also the founder of the "Identity Institute."
There is a Hawaii business name registration for "The Identity Institute," but it is not in good standing.
You can see the Hawaii Business Name Registration for "The Identity Institute" at
[hbe.ehawaii.gov]
Something seems to be going on here.
You can listen to "Dear Fanatic, Take It Easy" on both of these SIF websites.
[www.scienceofidentityfoundation.org]
These are both recently created websites.
www.jagadgurusiddhaswarupananda.com was created on January 24, 2007
www.scienceofidentityfoundation.org was created on April 4, 2007
All the dates shown on these two websites, that I have seen, are for 2007.
The www.scienceofidentityfoundation.org website mentions that Chris Butler is also the founder of the "Identity Institute."
There is a Hawaii business name registration for "The Identity Institute," but it is not in good standing.
You can see the Hawaii Business Name Registration for "The Identity Institute" at
[hbe.ehawaii.gov]
Something seems to be going on here.
You can listen to "Dear Fanatic, Take It Easy" on both of these SIF websites.
Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
jograves
()
Date: May 02, 2007 04:55PM
There does seem to be quite a bit of information about various involved parties popping up on a google search these days. That's one of the marvelous things about the internet. Low profile is a lot harder to achieve.
Better to get your own slant out there where an interested party might find it first.
Better to get your own slant out there where an interested party might find it first.
Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
cultreporter
()
Date: May 02, 2007 05:10PM
Quote
jograves
There does seem to be quite a bit of information about various involved parties popping up on a google search these days. That's one of the marvelous things about the internet. Low profile is a lot harder to achieve.
Better to get your own slant out there where an interested party might find it first.
I dont know about "better" tho - how much intelligence is one likely to see in a 'guru' after listening to "Dear Fanatic - Take it Easy" ? :lol: :lol:
It is like a Weird Al Yankovic parody of a guru writing a song - no wonder he only has delusions of being John Lennon with the stint in ISKCON and the wailing Asian wife. Clearly what happens when you surround yourself with people who dont have the courage to tell you that you can't sing
Krishna group in Hawaii
Posted by:
cultreporter
()
Date: May 04, 2007 03:29PM
We now have the domain name www.cultofbutler.com
Eventhough SoI returned ownership of the Chriskcon domain name after it was stolen due to technical issues with the reset it has not been pointing in the right direction.
Well back to work. Look out for the letter from Chris Butler onsite where he condones beating women and taking second wives.
We are also starting a new section of the site where we are publishing letters to Chris Butler, so if like me you posted off to Hawaii and never got a reply maybe you would like to give this a try.
Eventhough SoI returned ownership of the Chriskcon domain name after it was stolen due to technical issues with the reset it has not been pointing in the right direction.
Well back to work. Look out for the letter from Chris Butler onsite where he condones beating women and taking second wives.
We are also starting a new section of the site where we are publishing letters to Chris Butler, so if like me you posted off to Hawaii and never got a reply maybe you would like to give this a try.
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