Stumble It!
Web vandalism by fanatics
GERALD MORENO
Gerald Joe Moreno (ALIASES joe108. SSS108, GM108, JM 108. EQUALIZER etc.) is a Sathya Sai Baba admirer who has become the front man on the Internet for defending Sai Baba and all still connected with him. He has been very active trying to smear all ex-followers, dissidents and critics of Sai Baba since 2004. More recently (2008 onwards) his main targets have responded to his countless web pages and blogs so as to show at least some of the fanaticism, denial and deception he engages in on a full-time basis, having no known educational qualifications or other employment.
As an example of the twentieth-century version of Gresham’s law, Moreno works – without knowing it – on the principle is that information tends to drive knowledge out of circulation. He provides masses of information of a degraded quality – especially detail without overview, avoidance of issues through concentrating mainly on side-issues and cranky digressions surely hoping to avoid mentioning anything that goes against his views. On the urging of others who are his constant targets, I have since rebutted a number of his attacks on myself and them and highlighted his defense of injustice, deception, fraud, sex abuses and murder cover-ups in a series of my own blogs. See photo and contact details etc. here
Moreno exposed by his former friendly supporter: After first being positive towards Moreno’ s untruths, he has been shunned, the best single example being M. Alan Kazlev, who has refuted Moreno most thoroughly since he realised his original mistake. Of course, Moreno has also attacked him relentlessly and untruthfully on a large scale in web pages, blogs and more. Obviously, the factual exposé web sites and blogs have caused the disillusionment of very many who have been misled, while hundreds of former devotees – including a large number of former office-bearers and major followers in the Sathya Sai Organization) have signed a petition calling for the public investigation of Sathya Sai Baba and his organization (over 1300 signatories so far). After first being positive towards Moreno’ s untruths, he has been shunned, the best single example being M. Alan Kazlev, who has refuted Moreno most thoroughly since he realised his original mistake. Predictably, Moreno also attacks him relentlessly in diverse web sites and blogs.
His persistent fault-finding where there really are no faults of any significance is taken to hair-splitting extremes. He has all the petulant fervour of one who knows that he is in the wrong. Moreno devotes many hundreds of pages on-line to his primitive demagogic deceit tactics, which emulate the most right-wing US Republicans’ cheap attack methods, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary Moreno’s obvious ‘agenda’ is to cast doubt on me as excessively as he can contrive regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. He has even descended to the level of computer hacking, not confined to me See here)
Moreno attacked the Sai critic Basava Premanand, who wrote about Moreno’s attacks on his sound documentations the following:- “Moreno demands all sorts of documentation, and even when he has it he, as I have repeatedly demonstrated in my series of articles, distorts it to suit his own purposes. Why, one wonders, does he not cry out for proper documentation of Sai Baba’s (so-called) miracles? Why does he not demand documentation from the Sathya Sai Organisation, so that the criticisms that it is highly secretive and dishonest in, for example, its financial and other dealings could be answered? Why does he not spend time in calling for transparency and accountability within the Sai Organisation? Why does he constantly sidestep the many anomalies, inconsistencies, etc., that have been pointed out by serious former devotee and other critics of Sai Baba and his organisation? When some miracles have been investigated and proved to be false, I have, incidentally, been able to get removed, for example, some of the chapters in a book edited by S.P. Ruhela. This is perfectly reasonable and is solely in the interests of science, knowledge and the truth.” (see http://www.saibabaexpose.com/Prem5a.htm)
An independent Indian person examined Moreno’s materials and challenged him by e-mail etc., in which he called the entire product o Moreno a ‘red herring’. See http://saiguru.net/english/articles/statement_by_a_sri_lankan_man.htm
The following list of symptoms of deep mental-emotional denial and fanatical fixation on enemieswith strong obsessional and paranoid features are indicated by Moreno’s constant harassing obloquy:
Joe Moreno is not a devotee but is the main defender of all Sathya Sai matters The major and unrepentant infringer of copyright - countless photos of critics and texts of mine - rails at length about ONE SINGLE photo which he for some reason is rather desperate to hide away.
1) A main agenda of character assassination and ad hominem arguments, with repetitive challenges of ‘blatant or shameless lying’ without a morsel of reasonable proof, as I have explained here.
2) The systematic and meticulous use of dubious “documentation’ and refusal to accept official documentation disproving him definitively (egs. a) the Hislop letters controversy, b) the State Department warning on Sai Baba, c) the fact of a Supreme Court petition against Sai Baba d) the many attacks he made on Basava Premanand… as some of the many instances).
3) Wilful avoidance of issues Moreno has most assiduously failed to confront or even mention many of the main issues showing Sathya Sai Baba to talk nonsense, make false predictions, demonstrate huge ignorance of relatively simple science, geology, physics, history and many other items which are so well documented and so obvious that neither Moreno or anyone can raise any kind of defense against my and others’ points.
4) Truncating or omitting keywords in his quotations, which are invariably also faultily interpreted according to Moreno’s determination to try to prove Priddy is a liar, a latent homosexual, a ‘dirty old man’ (purposely confusing me with Sathya Sai Baba?) and whatever he sees fit to use as a slur… none of which is true or is more than mud-slinging.
5) Making taunts and jibes of a schoolyard or comic strip mentality: Some examples: distorting my name to Mr. Priddles, addressing me “Heil, Priddy”, characterising his chosen enemies’ responses to his comments including “frothing at the mouth”, “whines”, “snivels” and “moans” and numerous tendentious adjectives. His heading to one defamatory and hatched up web page he has about me is, “The Priddy and not so Priddy sides to Robert Priddy” This is his kind of reasoning altogether! [Note: he claimed in his FAQ to be a neutral observer!
6) Misrepresentation of others' views He has repeatedly particularly misrepresented me as if I still stand for views which I have long left behind and refuted clearly in public. This he knows since he is my most devoted reader, judging by how he finds even a letter or a comma out of place! He constantly distorts what I stand for through biased selections and major or minor omissions, presenting my former views on Sai Baba as if they were valid and I am thus in self-contradiction or confusion... which I certainly no longer am on these matters. He neglects to mention my modified views on so-called elemental (like earth spirits, succubi and other psychic phenomena - which see here)
7) Reversing many allegations and claims made by dissidents to claim the same or similar against them. [Egs. he has put great effort into attempts to tie all critics of Sathya Sai Baba together into one homogenous group "the anti-Sais" which he also characterised as a cult! (They are all anti-cultists, but Moreno persists in reversing every claim they make against Sai Baba or himself to level it against them. Thus he reversed the widespread allegations that Sathya Sai Baba is a pedophile by calling Barry Pittard a 'pedophile' (he had to withdraw that under jeopardy of litigation, but he did so without the simplest apology! See Serious Defamation Attempt By Gerald Moreno Defeated. By the 7-person Working Committee of the JuST Group ). After it had been pointed out that Moreno was, according to Indian law, sexually molested by Sathya Sai Baba, he has done his worst to insinuate that I may also have been sexually molested... by Sai Baba! Which is of course totally untrue - I have never been to a private interview without my wife's attendance and I was 50 when the first one took place, which disqualifies me entirely).
8) Infringement of copyright images and whole articles - and further manipulating dissident's photos [Egs. Vile uses of an photo of Sanjay Dadlani, a childish alteration to an image of Reinier van der Sandt, highly tendentious presentations of images of Conny Larsson. Also he posted without permission images of me and my son, and has also distorted a photo of my face in an attempt to ridicule me. For example, he also posted a copyright photo from my published book - annotating it and making false descriptions of some of the objects seen there.] He was forced due to proven copyright infringement to remove a copy of one of my articles from his wordpress blog, whereupon he reposted it on several other sites which do not respect copyright infringements!
9) Sabotage by anonymous and false submissions to the Sai petition Moreno posted bogus ‘submission’ on the Sai Petition under false names so he could later claim it was a bogus petition! This is, of course, totally invalid, as has been explained in detail here.
Further, and yet worse, he endorsed Murali Krishna Yachendra, who carried out a major attempt at deceit to entrap the Sai Petition admin. plus Basava Premanand and Barry Pittard into believing massive bogus claims against Sathya Sai Baba, with the sole intention of destroying the credibility of the exposures of Sai Baba. See here
10) Posting anonymously about a critic on numerous pornographic websites. (See Link)
11) Constant and massive web stalking of critics, their families, their associates, their friends, any e-mail address associated with them he can discover through helpers (Irene Strindhed). He attacks Conny Larsson, Barry Pittard’s family, Kevin R.D. Shepherd and his mother and many others, writing web pages and separate blogs to smear them. He has religiously hunted down all he can find about dozens of other critics – even including Wikipedia contributors and administrators, so as to smear them, some of his targets not being personally in the Sai Baba issue).
12) Constantly making wrong assumptions to favour his case and presenting them as fact (SWARA) Egs: Moreno tries to deny that Sai Baba made his revealing pre-Mumbai prediction of no fear of bombs – see Sai Baba bomb claim demolishes his credibility.
13) Casting doubts on facts or outright denials of them or their accuracy.
a) He questioned whether I wrote all the articles in Sanathana Sarathi I reported I did – mostly written on pressing request of the editor, V.K. Narasimhan – see here),
b) He questioned the Priddy’s considerable financial donations to Sathya Sai Baba (see here)
c) and denied my close relationship and countless private conversations with V.K. Narasimhan but to set the record straight, I provided scans of some of the many letters I received from Narasimhan and by extensive scans of daily diary entries made at the time recording much of the information I received from him. He calls me a blatant and shameless liar time and again, without any evidence, whenever I relate my experiences which are always 100% honest but inimicable to his beliefs! This is truly primitive, added to which he never admits of his lies when they are proven, nor hardly ever corrects any mistakes in his voluminous web pages when they are definitively pointed out to him. He cannot afford to, as he would be admitting the sheer calculated mendaciousness of his entire campaign against the exposé
d) He contested whether I was not a national leader in the Sathya Sai organization (but see here),
e) He makes various assertions on the state of my health claiming I suffers from senile dementia see Moreno’s ‘senile dementia’ slurs & irrationality – and widely publicising a most infamous Indian crank’s infamous claim that Priddy was dying of AIDS already in 2002 (Leo Rebello), and himself and many more similar inventions).
f) He claimed (on Wikipedia, before he was (with username SSS108) indefinitely banned from it by an unanimous panel of administrators – see here) that my writings in sociology and philosophy had never been referenced by anyone, but later this was disproved by source references (see Robert.C.Priddy – Wikipedia).
14) Automatic tit-for-tat reactions to comments made by critics of Sai Baba about him: he takes a point about Sathya Sai Baba or more often about himself and claims the same about the one who made the point. There are scores of instances of this, which indicate a stunted mentality lacking insight and real grievances based on factual matters.
a) He runs a massive smear campaign against all dissidents, but he calls all our writings a “smear campaign”. Our writings are exposures of many deceptions and are sober indeed compared to his false contrivances, and all our claims are backed up with public testimony, written evidence, circumstantial evidence or personal experiences.
b) Another ‘small example’: because Sathya Sai Baba has visited and endorsed Idi Amin, also recently, which I pointed out on-line using a composed image first published on ExBaba.com which represents the relationship Sai Baba-Idi Amin-G. Venkataraman, Moreno created an image of me with Idi Amin to create the impression that I endorse Idi Amin, when I have done nothing but expose and deplore Idi Amin (of course!) and in considerable detail. Such a pathetic tit-for-tat attack is Moreno’s way to make his dirt to stick somehow.
c) Say that a critic makes the observation that Moreno uses bullying tactics, straightway will come an article referring to how that writer is a bully, and the word “bully” will appear in Moreno’s article title.
d) Likewise, Moreno has developed a narrative for himself in which he is the blameless victim of defamation and attacks, yet the blogs etc. to which he refers are only responses first made around 3 years after he had begun his massive harassment and web stalking of dissenters, of critics, their families, their associates, their friends, any e-mail address associated with them he can discover through helpers (eg. Irene Strindhed).
e) Some of his blogs were (very rightly) characterised as “feral attacks”, whereupon he arranged for critics’ responses to be characterised on a web page as “feral attacks”.
f) When I pointed out the existence of a broad ‘lunatic fringe’ around Sai Baba – an indubitable fact known to all who have had any length of contact with the ashram or Sai centres around the world, Moreno characterised the main critics of Sathya Sai Baba as a ‘lunatic fringe’.
g) Since the exposé necessarily forwards the many creditable and sworn, signed, accusations of sexual abuse by Sai Baba, Moreno has repeatedly tried to smear me with sexual innuendo and preposterous claims, such as that I would not be able to avoid the perception that I was sexually abused! (I met Sai Baba first aged 50 and was never together with him without my wife. Moreno). He has connected my name with ‘homoerotic dreams’ and pornographic websites (which I have never ever posted my website URL on (but someone did!?)
15) Demagogic technique of labeling diverse persons and opinions under one heading Moreno strives to mislead the reader by conflating all opinions of all critics under the catch-all phrase ‘anti-Sai’. Because I support some of the reports of certain persons, like Dave Lyons, Sanjay Dadlani, Alexander Nagel, M. Alan Kazlev, Conny Larsson, Asa Samsioe and various others, he repeatedly hammers in the false implication that I agree with all and everything they stand for, which is not true at all. I do agree in very large part with their criticisms of Sathya Sai Baba and have found all reason to believe their testimonies. Moreno is a great exponent of attacking the character of a person rather than his arguments – and equally the closely related ‘straw man’ argument. This fallacy is one of his most basic crutches. The Straw Man fallacy occurs when one ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position through a false association to other persons or standpoints. (see here) He makes images combining the photos of critics and associating all the one stands for with the other as if they are ‘joined at the hip’ – yet actually there are very considerable differences between them (I am virtually an atheist, while Dadlani is a Hindu believer, for example).
15) Peevish attempts at ‘proofs’ of lying Moreno’s imaginative claims about me and Haraldsson are totally refuted with considerable documentation now, see the main page at http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/30/Haraldsson.html and specific details on what was actually published in EH’s book at http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/30/emails.html#hints. By appeal to carefully selected usages given by college and other dictionaries – words like ‘colleague (which I used of my friend and colleague in parapsychological matters, Erlendur Haraldsson), of ‘professor’ when I once used this word (uncapitalized) about myself, but not as a title, just in the general, accepted dictionary sense.’ Yet more cantankerously, Moreno attacked me for referring to Professor Erlendur Haraldsson and myself as ‘colleagues’, quoting the strictest dictionary meaning of the word ‘colleague’ he could find (i.e. persons who attended the same college). But it was entirely correct to call our relationship ‘collegial’ according to the more general use of the term as associate, also given in most dictionaries, though I have been attacked on the Internet very immoderately by a Sai fanatic for not using that word in its strictest, narrow sense). In scores of e-mails over a period of 12 years, Haraldsson discussed with me on parapaychological matters and Sai Baba in a collegial manner, now and again asking me for research assistance – such as and on a key article he wrote about Sai Baba for eventual publication and also as regards Sai Baba’s predictions of his death and various of his teachings, which information he has then published . He has also referred to my writings on Sathya Sai Baba in his bibliography in at least one of his papers about Sathya Sai Baba ( “Of Indian God-Men and Miracle-Makers: The Case of Sathya Sai Baba.” British Psychological Association, Transpersonal section, Cober Hill, Scarborough. 13. 9. 2004.).
Yet more absurdly, Moreno repeatedly accused me of being a “thief” due to the fact that I borrowed some of the meta-tags he used on his pages to gain Google prominence… but which are not copyright and were already in the public domain. He repeated this mainly in revenge because I posted an image of him copied by me from the independent website of Kevin Shepherd (originally found on Moreno’s public site at vishvarupa.com). Of course, he had posted one of me beforehand – and further numerous images of my son (who has nothing to do with Sai Baba, but just because he is my son). I actually later removed his image from my site on request, though he had never responded in kind. All this illustrates his puerile attempts to throw dirt in the hope that some of it will stick.
16) Bogus claim of neutrality Incredibly, Gerald Moreno has laid claim to being ‘neutral’ on these issues, not least claiming not to be a follower of Sathya Sai Baba or a believer in his self-professed omnipotence, omniscience or avatarhood. However, he accuses me of exactly what he does himself :- “Robert Priddy cherry-picks his one-way and selective criticisms and whines, snivels and moans about what he perceives as faults, gullibility and mental deficiencies in others, all the while wholly dismissing these same faults in himself and other critic’s of Sathya Sai Baba.” Moreno conveniently overlooks my many remarks about having been deceived leading to my own consequent errors of judgement, similar to those of many Western devotees. After 2000, when I resigned from the Sathya Sai Organization, those who do not examine the evidence fairly and who continue to support Sathya Sai Baba are very rightly accused of gullibility. There is no longer any valid excuse, such as that which applied in my case before 2000. Moreno overlooks the glaring fact that there are many uneducated and very simple people among the followers of Sai Baba, mostly Indian peasants who have never even been to school, and – as a former Organization leader for 18 years – I can confirm that many people with considerable mental problems are attracted to and are always present at the Sai groups, centres and ashrams.
17) Moreno also accuses me of “typical, bitter and negative Anti-Sai articles”. Note firstly how Moreno’s own words throughout his writings are typical, bitter, negative and antipathetic to me and virtually all of the critics. I agree that my current writings are almost entirely negative about Sathya Sai Baba and so should they be – I have to make up for all the excessive positivity I expressed when I was a follower. I no longer have anything positive to say about Sai Baba after being deceived by him so deeply for so long, and having found him out as an undoubted sexual abuser and murder accomplice. I am not bitter – just very disdainful, who is a fully exposed liar and much worse, so therefore I am no longer interested in any way whatever to promote any good acts Sathya Sai Baba has done. I did too much of that earlier in my book ‘Source of the Dream‘ and in many articles in his journal Sanathana Sarathi (to which Narasimhan reported a constant and considerable positive response, especially by educated persons).
The above points cover some aspects of Gerald Moreno’s enormous concentration on my person and writings, always with the intent to discredit anything on any pretext, however remote from what is reasonable or true. He studies my work like the devil studies the Bible! And I am not the only target for his bile, far from it!
Having worked for several years with emotionally retarded and socially deviant children and very disturbed teenagers in the most progressive institutions in their era in Norway and Sweden, I am well acquainted with signs of arrested emotional development and social problems. I have also known psychiatrists as friends since my student days – including some very famous ones like Dr. Maxwell Jones, Dr. Ronald Laing and Dr. David Cooper – and have been active in the debate about the diagnoses and therapies used in psychiatry for years in the 1960s. (Some of my publications are on-line too). I have even worked for several months in a psychiatric hospital in UK where my mother was a registered staff nurse. I taught at the Institute of Psychology ay University of Oslo and knew many psychologists, and interviewed many in a professional context too. It is with some experience, therefore that I can assert that Moreno’s mental-emotional condition shows a total lack of normal empathy with others. This he demonstrates throughout many hundreds of web pages/blogs (especially towards all the many alleging victims of alleged sexual abuse by Sai Baba). Not merely lack of empathy but aggressive and vicious reactions against those whose accounts and reports threaten his cherished belief system, which centres on persons who he considers to be avatars or otherwise holy incarnate forms of God (as emphasised by his chosen website title, vishvarupa.com). Thus he supports those who support Sai Baba, but defends them in a way which is always angled as an attack on Sai Baba’s critics! His fury at some critics having pointed out that what Sathya Sai Baba did to him amounts to sexual molestation and ‘grooming’ is unquenchable. He directs his rage outwards, indiscriminately denouncing all and everyone he picks on – not unlike juvenile delinquents who put on a tough front and hit out in bully fashion.
Note that – by their complete silence – the International Sathya Sai Organization in practice hypocritically condones the activities of this vicious character assassin, whose work they could easily stop.
See more on Moreno’s countless attacks:-
See here?
Moreno used an illegal hacking trick on my web browser so that I cannot normally access this website or up-date it. The attempt is amateurish and is easily averted, as the continued appearance of my postings proved. Gerald Moreno is certainly behind this, because Google links I open redirect to his mud-slinging site against me. This only affects those whose computers are already infected with the particular malware, not normal surfers. The attack was not confined to me.
