I think that there are quite a few pics out there, scroll through Drek's pics, that may not claimed by the cult.

If you are not able to use the pics you had before my suggestion is to use pics from magazines and newspapers and search through the libraries for photos that don't in any way fall under some ownership by the cult.

In this case a picture IS worth a thousand words. Nothing speaks to the bizzare history of this cult like the darshan pictures, the Khrishna pics, and those video of the Holi crowd. I would have liked to make Dr. Eduardo Padron sit next to Rawat in the Mala costume. I was very discouraged by our inability to get through to the powers that be on that one.Score one for the cult- not quite like having Tom Cruise and John Travolta lending you credibility but a coup for the cult for sure.

I think there has been a gap of time without a lot of cult news and unless there is another newsworthy tragedy, a Jonestown for example, the cult is just not seen as relevant news. The tragedy of people losing their intellectual freedom to a cult is not as newsworthy as a mass suicide or freakish mass wedding- or even a guy spraying colored water to throngs of people at the Orange Bowl.

I was very upset about the Miami Dade thing because it felt personal to me. I grew up there and it was the scene of the crime for me. One of my biggest what if's is what if I had never joined this cult, would I have continued on the postive educational path I was on? I knew so many bright premies who gave up educations for the cult. The idea that a college president , a publicly funded college, would endorse the cult just sickens and saddens me. What happened to separation of church and state? EV has always tried to have its cake and eat it too on that one, saying it is not a religion but getting the tax breaks as a "church"----huh?

My impression is very few people CARE anymore but us. Our former cult has trouble getting new members no matter what, so parents are not losing kids in droves like the seventies and there is no awareness of a cult problem. The ones who remain in EV are few and at this point they have been premies the majority of their lives.

The cult is irrelevant to any one who was never in it or had a close family or friend in it. It is not newsworthy. It makes it all the more important these websites stay up, and strong, hopefully with those pictures. For a new person getting sucked in there is no other source on the history of Prem Rawat. With Prem Rawat on this legitimacy campaign, and occaisionally even getting college presidents to help him suck new members in, it has never been more important that those who do care keep the information out there, photos especially.