User talk:John Brauns
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Hello John Brauns and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.
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[edit] Hate groups and new religious movements
I trust you'll be interested in this: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Hate groups and new religious movements. -- Antaeus Feldspar 01:07, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Clarification needed on "ex-premies"
As you know, I have no first-hand experience with either Prem Rawat or with "ex-premies" except through Wikipedia, but I have a question to make sure that I'm correctly understanding what each side is asserting. It's my understanding that Elan Vital has named certain ex-followers as the members of a hate group called Ex-Premies (I'm fairly clear on what they're alleging, because they're fairly determined to repeat the allegation whenever and wherever possible.) But am I correct in believing that the ex-followers they name as leaders of this group are not only denying that they are a hate group, but that "ex-premies" is a group at all, as opposed to simply a description of the ex-member status of those named? -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:37, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Antaeus, former followers of Rawat (ex-premies) have, on occasion, discussed the possibility of forming an organisation but have not yet done so. We communicate in public or in private on issues as they arise, but there really is no identifiable group. I own and manage ex-premie.org with help from Jean-Michel Khan, one of Rawat's former instructors. No one else has access to the site. Mike Finch (another former instructor) has set up his own independent site (www.mikefinch.com), as has 'Drek' (www.drek.us). There are currently disagreements about some of the content on these sites, but there is no disagreement about our freedom to publish this information.
- Regarding EV's allegations, they have been careful to only name two ex-premies who have been publicly subject to legal action. Neville Ackland staged a one man protest outside two of EV's events in Australia and unrelatedly was imprisoned for drug offences; and John Macgregor who is subject to ongoing legal action resulting from the leak of some documents from Ivory's Rock Conference Centre. Neither are particularly significant regarding the allegations against Prem Rawat on ex-premie.org. The significant information comes from Mike Dettmers, Mike Donner and Bob Mishler, who EV have made no attempt to discredit. All the other allegations on EV's site specify unnamed ex-premies including myself. --John Brauns 23:45, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Images
- Do I remember correctly that you are involved with the site, http://www.ex-premie.org/ ? If so, I am curious as to how you have obtained some of the images used on your site. If some of these images were taken by yourself or others that can assert that they took the pictures themselves (such as the image of the palatial size estate on the mainpage), then you could upload them to Wikimedia Commons, under a appropriate released license to the public and then they could be displayed here on Wikipedia in relevant articles about the subjects. That would only be the case if, for example, you yourself or someone you know that could release the rights, personally took the picture of the image of that palatial estate. Smee 17:08, 20 January 2007 (UTC).
