Moreno's Guardian Lies And Speculations
This is the type of poorly cobbled and cribbed style of "investigation" that Gerald Moreno is well known for. In response to the recent Guardian article that presents a devastating exposé for the Sai (Youth) Organisation in the UK, Gerald inimitably found a way to twist things around to me in a full and blatant display of his continuing obsession with me.
For all of his inclinations against "conspiracy theories" that are against Sathya Sai Baba, it is funny to see how he quickly and devotedly engages in a conspiracy theory of his own! Before one reads further, it is essential to read the Guardian article (and it's follow-ups) to properly understand this issue and Moreno's skewed take on it, and then allow me to explain:
On April 24th 2006, I made the following comment on the SSB2 Yahoogroup under the heading, "You people make me sick":
And because I intended to give the details shortly, I did not bother to expand on my comment. In the fallout from the Guardian article, which drew attention to an upcoming (November 2006) "pilgrimage" to Sathya Sai Baba with over 200 young boys making the journey, I made the following rebuttals to Sai devotees who were engaging in foul verbal abuse against me and accused me of being blind:
In essence, I am merely drawing attention to the fact that I knew months ago that this trip would be taking place, and that this accounted for my sardonic comments about Sai Baba's perverted sexual cravings back in April. However, Gerald Moreno, in his utterly cockeyed and topsy-turvy way has "authoritatively" claimed that this refers to a secretive collaboration between former devotees and the Guardian journalist going back six months!
And if that wasn't enough, there was more still:
What Moronic Moreno fails to understand is that, as with any newsworthy issue, any reporter worth his salt would do his very best to take account of both sides of the story. Indeed the Guardian reporter, Paul Lewis, made all efforts to interview all parties connected to the story including Peter Westgarth, Chief Executive of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme; Brig. Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, personal secretary to HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh; Tom Sackville, former Home Office minister; Hon. Michael Gove MP, and even Shitu Chudasama, the National Youth Co-Ordinator for the UK Sai Organisation. Pretty impressive even if I do say so myself.
Nowhere has Paul Lewis intimated that he was in contact with former devotees of Sathya Sai Baba, so Moreno has no proof for that claim. However, as stated already, a good journalist owuld seek to obtain all angles of the story and so Paul Lewis was certainly in contact with former devotees. Moreno would certainly turn up his nose at this, given his predilections for one-sided and almost fascist reporting that is wholly favourable to Sai Baba. However it is utterly silly of Moreno to jump to the wild conclusion that this was a scheming close collaboration, that too taking place for six months!
This is Gerald Moreno at his best; making wild assumptions, inferences, speculations and conclusions, cobbled together from all sorts of sources and coming up with a premature banana. More serious are his insinuations against Paul Lewis and his journalistic skills , when he happens to be a widely respected columnist and broadcaster writing for a highbrow national British newspaper such as the Guardian.
An example of this is Moreno's insinuations about Lewis' reporting of the US State Dept. India Travel Advisory, that warns travellers to India that:
"U.S. citizens should be aware that there have been unconfirmed reports of inappropriate sexual behavior by a prominent local religious leader at an ashram or religious retreat located in Andhra Pradesh. Most of the reports indicate that the subjects of these approaches have been young male devotees, including a number of U.S. citizens."
Naturally this refers to Sathya Sai Baba as US officials will confirm. See how Moreno completely twists this below:
Does Moreno know anything about journalistic writing? Does he know anything about how to write an article? The extremely piss-poor style of his own writing (complete with his boldened, italicised and underlined words to add emphasis) would earn him a D- from any English teacher. If one reads the Guardian article (and especially the print version) it is plainly apparent that the Advisory is being paraphrased. It was not necessary to quote the entire text which would have disrupted the flow of the whole piece. Unconfirmed or not, the fact is that Sathya Sai Baba and his Organisation are hugely embarrassed at the fact that they are named and shamed by the US State Dept. for homosexual and child sexual abuse, and this is why they cannot handle the fact that they will be named and shamed repeatedly for this very issue. It's no wonder that Sai Baba and his supporters will quibble over including words and correcting grammar.
More serious are Moreno's insinuations that Lewis intentionally misquoted the Advisory, further casting doubt on Lewis' journalistic credentials. This careless action makes it entirely possible that Lewis may consult with his legal counsel with the intention of bringing legal action against Moreno, which I think would be sufficient punitive action to prevent such careless slander from being carrie dout willy-nilly.
Further to this Moreno continued to waffle by nitpicking over the one inaccuracy in the article, Sai Baba's age. Whereas the article (at the time of writing) states that Sathya Sai Bba is 79 going on 80, the situation is that he is really 80 going on 81. Making a big hoo-ha over this is deplorable, especially since sensational new research has established Sathya Sai Baba's current age to be 77 going on 78. :-)
And then after all this, Gerald Moreno reveals to the whole world how he missed the whole point of the Guardian article:
Even though Moreno is still stupidly claiming six months worth of collaboration he fails to understand that's because the article in itself was not about Sai Baba's child sex abuses per se, but about the shameless arrogation and endorsement claims made by the Sai Organisation about gaining Royal approval for their activities! As the article reveals, Sai devotees made a grand hoo-haa about an "endorsement from the Queen" at a Buckingham Palace garden party after Shitu Chudasama was asked to address the crowd upon receiving his Duke of Edinburgh Award certificate. They even wrote a fanciful article about it (hosted on my test blog) on their official RadioSai website and were forced to pull it down after Award executives took objection and personally intervened.
Is it even possible for Gerald Moreno to comprehend the enormous scale of this story? HRH Prince Phillip is the husband of the Queen of England, and the prestige of his Award scheme has been besmirched thanks to it's association with a motley organisation who worships a homosexual paedophile as God incarnate on earth! There's no telling how high this story has reached in the upper echelons of the British establishment; surely there may be several blushing faces for allowing it to happen in the first place and to be sensationally exposed in the British media which also brought a huge and very public backlash for the Sai Organisation, causing red faces on their side too. Other newspapers in India and Taiwan have followed up on the Guardian's story which makes this British story a very international affair, and all Moreno can do is quibble over words like "unconfirmed", "scheming", "collaboration", "bias", and other accusatory epithets that fully suit his hateful agenda against the former devotees of Sathya Sai Baba.
Is it even possible for Gerald Moreno to get himself a reality check? Contrary to Moreno's unsubstantiated and hasty claims, there is no repackaging of old information as no other media source has reported on this instance of 200 British boys on their way to visit a suspected homosexual paedophile posing as a "living god", what to speak of the new reportage involving the prestige of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. As far as I am aware, Paul Lewis found out about the India pilgrimage all on his own despite my writing about it in May 2006. I certainly never passed him any of that information.
As a matter of fact, and this may come as a huge shock to Moreno, Paul Lewis was not "collaborating" with former devotees for six months. In fact, there was no contact lasting even up to a month. This whole "six month" misconception has originated from the dark recesses of Moreno's dull brain after inferring, speculating, assuming and concluding his ideas after cobbling together miscellaneous bits of information from April 2006. When I made those comments, I was in fact referring to my article 'UK Youth Heading To Sai Baba Abuse', which was published only a few days later (3rd May 2006)! As you can see, I reported my findings from reading the details of the trip on the official website of the Sai Youth UK and this was what I was referring to in my public message. That's it.
Also, I have had almost no contact with Paul Lewis during the time he took to prepare his article. He emailed me on only one occasion with a view to obtain the contact details of a British citizen who was sexually molested by Sai Baba, and which I provided him with. That's it. Nothing more and nothing less. Thus it is a complete mystery where Moreno got his ludicrous "six months collaboration" idea from given that he has not even an inch of proof to support his useless ideas. Those of us who have observed his patterns of behaviour over an extended period of time know that this is typical fare from Moreno and is fit for being ignored; it has always been the case that Moreno flaps his arms and screams for five minutes and then remains quiet when someone places a cloth over his cage.
A final quote from Moreno fully exposes his way of thinking:
Just imagine: Even if Gerald Moreno was correct about a six-month collaboration with Guardian journalists, a logical fallacy is exposed in his arguments above; if I have a big mouth then how did I keep quiet about it for so long? :-) Trust him not to be aware that my comments were deliberately intended to be a verbal substitute for rubbing the salt deeply into his wounds, he would love to twist things around and claim that I indulge in careless talk.
It should be noted that upon the publication and further revelation of the Guardian article, extremely inept and pathetic responses were furnished by both Gerald Moreno and his sidekick, Lisa De Witt, who immediately set about "investigating" Paul Lewis' religious affiliation of all things! After this amusing start, they then reverted to type by doing exactly the same things that Moreno condemns in his quote above, viz., making ad-hominem attacks and rehashing old slanderous material. In that light, it is plainly clear that Moreno is very bitter about missing out on this sensational and huge Guardian exposé which is why he is coming out with all of these invectives, slanders, conspiracy theories and general quackery only after everyone else has packed up and gone home for the evening.
It's no wonder he complains that Paul Lewis "missed" his take on the BBC movie affair; it wouldn't surprise me at all if Lewis knew all about Moreno and his meanderings and had dismissed him as a quack, unworthy of even a cursory email contact. Ditto for Tom Sackville, whom Moreno claims is in receipt of his views. That in itself speaks volumes about Moreno's status as a self-appointed advocate of Sathya Sai Baba, and is perfectly consistent with the various other dismissals that he has publicly suffered in the past.
With all of the various issues surrounding Gerald Moreno, listed on this blog and elsewhere, it only remains to be seen how long a confused soul like him will survive. What with his own flip-flopping on Sai Baba's divinity, Sai Baba's sexual abuses of children, his own sexperience at the hands of Sai Baba, confessions to near-lapses into mental illness, as well as the very serious development of psychopathic tendencies, we cannot honestly expect him to continue like this without suffering a serious and major falldown.
For all of his inclinations against "conspiracy theories" that are against Sathya Sai Baba, it is funny to see how he quickly and devotedly engages in a conspiracy theory of his own! Before one reads further, it is essential to read the Guardian article (and it's follow-ups) to properly understand this issue and Moreno's skewed take on it, and then allow me to explain:
On April 24th 2006, I made the following comment on the SSB2 Yahoogroup under the heading, "You people make me sick":
"Sai Baba, male-rapist extraordinaire, has been drooling for TWO YEARS expecting the entire UK Youth contingent to travel to Puttaparthi and satisfy his perverted sexual cravings.
"It's all going down this November. Details to follow."
And because I intended to give the details shortly, I did not bother to expand on my comment. In the fallout from the Guardian article, which drew attention to an upcoming (November 2006) "pilgrimage" to Sathya Sai Baba with over 200 young boys making the journey, I made the following rebuttals to Sai devotees who were engaging in foul verbal abuse against me and accused me of being blind:
"Want to talk about blindness? I warned you fools about this months ago, but you're way too thick to pick up the hints. I even warned you months in advance about the BBC movie, and you were too thick to pick up the hints about that too. Nothing has changed even two years later. :-)"
In essence, I am merely drawing attention to the fact that I knew months ago that this trip would be taking place, and that this accounted for my sardonic comments about Sai Baba's perverted sexual cravings back in April. However, Gerald Moreno, in his utterly cockeyed and topsy-turvy way has "authoritatively" claimed that this refers to a secretive collaboration between former devotees and the Guardian journalist going back six months!
"Six months later, come November (just asSanjay said), Paul Lewis' Anti-Sai article was published about (you guessed it) the UK Youth Group Trip and allegations of 'pedophilia'."
And if that wasn't enough, there was more still:
"Needless to say, it is exactly this type of hidden bias that is responsible for misleading so many people about Sai Baba. This very same type of hidden bias is to be found in both the Secret Swami Documentary and Michelle Goldberg's Salon.com article entitled Untouchable?. This time around, however, we have direct admissions from Sanjay Dadlani that this newspaper article was the unequivocal result of behind-the-scenes scheming, subterfuge and collaboration between The Guardian, Paul Lewis and Anti-Sai Activists themselves."
What Moronic Moreno fails to understand is that, as with any newsworthy issue, any reporter worth his salt would do his very best to take account of both sides of the story. Indeed the Guardian reporter, Paul Lewis, made all efforts to interview all parties connected to the story including Peter Westgarth, Chief Executive of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme; Brig. Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, personal secretary to HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh; Tom Sackville, former Home Office minister; Hon. Michael Gove MP, and even Shitu Chudasama, the National Youth Co-Ordinator for the UK Sai Organisation. Pretty impressive even if I do say so myself.
Nowhere has Paul Lewis intimated that he was in contact with former devotees of Sathya Sai Baba, so Moreno has no proof for that claim. However, as stated already, a good journalist owuld seek to obtain all angles of the story and so Paul Lewis was certainly in contact with former devotees. Moreno would certainly turn up his nose at this, given his predilections for one-sided and almost fascist reporting that is wholly favourable to Sai Baba. However it is utterly silly of Moreno to jump to the wild conclusion that this was a scheming close collaboration, that too taking place for six months!
This is Gerald Moreno at his best; making wild assumptions, inferences, speculations and conclusions, cobbled together from all sorts of sources and coming up with a premature banana. More serious are his insinuations against Paul Lewis and his journalistic skills , when he happens to be a widely respected columnist and broadcaster writing for a highbrow national British newspaper such as the Guardian.
An example of this is Moreno's insinuations about Lewis' reporting of the US State Dept. India Travel Advisory, that warns travellers to India that:
"U.S. citizens should be aware that there have been unconfirmed reports of inappropriate sexual behavior by a prominent local religious leader at an ashram or religious retreat located in Andhra Pradesh. Most of the reports indicate that the subjects of these approaches have been young male devotees, including a number of U.S. citizens."
Naturally this refers to Sathya Sai Baba as US officials will confirm. See how Moreno completely twists this below:
Does Moreno know anything about journalistic writing? Does he know anything about how to write an article? The extremely piss-poor style of his own writing (complete with his boldened, italicised and underlined words to add emphasis) would earn him a D- from any English teacher. If one reads the Guardian article (and especially the print version) it is plainly apparent that the Advisory is being paraphrased. It was not necessary to quote the entire text which would have disrupted the flow of the whole piece. Unconfirmed or not, the fact is that Sathya Sai Baba and his Organisation are hugely embarrassed at the fact that they are named and shamed by the US State Dept. for homosexual and child sexual abuse, and this is why they cannot handle the fact that they will be named and shamed repeatedly for this very issue. It's no wonder that Sai Baba and his supporters will quibble over including words and correcting grammar.
More serious are Moreno's insinuations that Lewis intentionally misquoted the Advisory, further casting doubt on Lewis' journalistic credentials. This careless action makes it entirely possible that Lewis may consult with his legal counsel with the intention of bringing legal action against Moreno, which I think would be sufficient punitive action to prevent such careless slander from being carrie dout willy-nilly.
Further to this Moreno continued to waffle by nitpicking over the one inaccuracy in the article, Sai Baba's age. Whereas the article (at the time of writing) states that Sathya Sai Bba is 79 going on 80, the situation is that he is really 80 going on 81. Making a big hoo-ha over this is deplorable, especially since sensational new research has established Sathya Sai Baba's current age to be 77 going on 78. :-)
And then after all this, Gerald Moreno reveals to the whole world how he missed the whole point of the Guardian article:
Even though Moreno is still stupidly claiming six months worth of collaboration he fails to understand that's because the article in itself was not about Sai Baba's child sex abuses per se, but about the shameless arrogation and endorsement claims made by the Sai Organisation about gaining Royal approval for their activities! As the article reveals, Sai devotees made a grand hoo-haa about an "endorsement from the Queen" at a Buckingham Palace garden party after Shitu Chudasama was asked to address the crowd upon receiving his Duke of Edinburgh Award certificate. They even wrote a fanciful article about it (hosted on my test blog) on their official RadioSai website and were forced to pull it down after Award executives took objection and personally intervened.
Is it even possible for Gerald Moreno to comprehend the enormous scale of this story? HRH Prince Phillip is the husband of the Queen of England, and the prestige of his Award scheme has been besmirched thanks to it's association with a motley organisation who worships a homosexual paedophile as God incarnate on earth! There's no telling how high this story has reached in the upper echelons of the British establishment; surely there may be several blushing faces for allowing it to happen in the first place and to be sensationally exposed in the British media which also brought a huge and very public backlash for the Sai Organisation, causing red faces on their side too. Other newspapers in India and Taiwan have followed up on the Guardian's story which makes this British story a very international affair, and all Moreno can do is quibble over words like "unconfirmed", "scheming", "collaboration", "bias", and other accusatory epithets that fully suit his hateful agenda against the former devotees of Sathya Sai Baba.
Is it even possible for Gerald Moreno to get himself a reality check? Contrary to Moreno's unsubstantiated and hasty claims, there is no repackaging of old information as no other media source has reported on this instance of 200 British boys on their way to visit a suspected homosexual paedophile posing as a "living god", what to speak of the new reportage involving the prestige of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. As far as I am aware, Paul Lewis found out about the India pilgrimage all on his own despite my writing about it in May 2006. I certainly never passed him any of that information.
As a matter of fact, and this may come as a huge shock to Moreno, Paul Lewis was not "collaborating" with former devotees for six months. In fact, there was no contact lasting even up to a month. This whole "six month" misconception has originated from the dark recesses of Moreno's dull brain after inferring, speculating, assuming and concluding his ideas after cobbling together miscellaneous bits of information from April 2006. When I made those comments, I was in fact referring to my article 'UK Youth Heading To Sai Baba Abuse', which was published only a few days later (3rd May 2006)! As you can see, I reported my findings from reading the details of the trip on the official website of the Sai Youth UK and this was what I was referring to in my public message. That's it.
Also, I have had almost no contact with Paul Lewis during the time he took to prepare his article. He emailed me on only one occasion with a view to obtain the contact details of a British citizen who was sexually molested by Sai Baba, and which I provided him with. That's it. Nothing more and nothing less. Thus it is a complete mystery where Moreno got his ludicrous "six months collaboration" idea from given that he has not even an inch of proof to support his useless ideas. Those of us who have observed his patterns of behaviour over an extended period of time know that this is typical fare from Moreno and is fit for being ignored; it has always been the case that Moreno flaps his arms and screams for five minutes and then remains quiet when someone places a cloth over his cage.
A final quote from Moreno fully exposes his way of thinking:
Just imagine: Even if Gerald Moreno was correct about a six-month collaboration with Guardian journalists, a logical fallacy is exposed in his arguments above; if I have a big mouth then how did I keep quiet about it for so long? :-) Trust him not to be aware that my comments were deliberately intended to be a verbal substitute for rubbing the salt deeply into his wounds, he would love to twist things around and claim that I indulge in careless talk.
It should be noted that upon the publication and further revelation of the Guardian article, extremely inept and pathetic responses were furnished by both Gerald Moreno and his sidekick, Lisa De Witt, who immediately set about "investigating" Paul Lewis' religious affiliation of all things! After this amusing start, they then reverted to type by doing exactly the same things that Moreno condemns in his quote above, viz., making ad-hominem attacks and rehashing old slanderous material. In that light, it is plainly clear that Moreno is very bitter about missing out on this sensational and huge Guardian exposé which is why he is coming out with all of these invectives, slanders, conspiracy theories and general quackery only after everyone else has packed up and gone home for the evening.
It's no wonder he complains that Paul Lewis "missed" his take on the BBC movie affair; it wouldn't surprise me at all if Lewis knew all about Moreno and his meanderings and had dismissed him as a quack, unworthy of even a cursory email contact. Ditto for Tom Sackville, whom Moreno claims is in receipt of his views. That in itself speaks volumes about Moreno's status as a self-appointed advocate of Sathya Sai Baba, and is perfectly consistent with the various other dismissals that he has publicly suffered in the past.
With all of the various issues surrounding Gerald Moreno, listed on this blog and elsewhere, it only remains to be seen how long a confused soul like him will survive. What with his own flip-flopping on Sai Baba's divinity, Sai Baba's sexual abuses of children, his own sexperience at the hands of Sai Baba, confessions to near-lapses into mental illness, as well as the very serious development of psychopathic tendencies, we cannot honestly expect him to continue like this without suffering a serious and major falldown.
posted by Swami Saiexposedananda at 19:18
