Old Bhagwan, new bottles

Wed, 20 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Ever wonder what ever happened to the guy whose religious followers were linked to the only episode of domestic mass bioterrorism in America? Well, in the case of the late, notorious Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, old renegade sex gurus never die. He just "left his body" somewhere in India in 1990 and later emerged as a thriving, modern-day publishing machine known as Osho.

Rajneesh's flock caught much of his meditative bon mots on tape, and now incessantly recycle these ponderings as spiritual wisdom under the author name of Osho. This Osho has now generated an impressively diversified empire of books, video tapes, television shows, corporate seminars (via Osho "trainees") and even a 34-acre luxury spa in Pune, India. With more than a dozen titles published and still going strong, his worldwide book and audio book sales now surpass $1 million annually. Due out in mid-November from the ever-prolific (albeit, technically dead) Osho: Three new titles from St. Martin's Griffin -- "Creativity," "Courage" and "Maturity," all priced at $11.95 -- to mark the 10th anniversary of his death in January. And in May 2000, a new "autobiography" with the working title "Osho: The Autobiography of the Spiritually Incorrect Mystic."

Desperately seeking angry white females

Thu, 14 Oct 1999 10:01:00 +0000

Brainstorming by e-mail, Lisa Turner and a half-dozen other women discuss how they might attract new recruits into their circle:

How about a craft fair? We'd pass out literature and sign up women who'd like to find out more about us. They'd come to our booths to see our decorative candles and jewelry and soaps. All showing off our organization's logo. It would be just like a Renaissance festival ...
Turner and her friends are not inviting women to join a church group or a charity drive. Instead, they represent the white separatist organization World Church of the Creator, an overtly racist and anti-Semitic group that is aggressively targeting women to join its traditional constituency of angry white males.
Experts say a newly stepped-up recruitment effort by this and other such groups targeting women is growing, especially on the World Wide Web, and that it is rooted in the standard business dictum: Grow or die.
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Salon.com > Dennis McCafferty

Old Bhagwan, new bottles

Desperately seeking angry white females