Swami Juice (Zrii)

"Buy 1 for yourself and get the chance to sell your friends and family 5 and get your downline started!" We examine the multi-level marketing industry, where only the people who come up with the ideas make any money, and everybody else is left unhappy, broke, and tired of reading scripts and selling overpriced vitamins and similarly worthless products. Includes Global Prosperity, Pinnacle Quest International, IRS Codebusters, Stratia, and other new Global Prosperity scams.

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Stinky McGurk

Swami Juice (Zrii)

Post by Stinky McGurk »

See where that New-Age nutcase Deepak Chopra is entering the mlm market.

Headed by Bill "Fruit Of The Loom" Farley, they're entering the network marketing arena with an amalaki berry juice called "Zrii".

(BTW, if you live in Southern Kentucky, this might not be the opportunity for you.)

They must be doing quite well according to this latest bulletin put out by the company:

NEWS FLASH: We may have just made history again! By all indications, today Zrii paid out more commissions in our very first weekly commission run than any other company in our industry ever has in a first week of commissions.

Just how, I wonder, would they know that?
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Re: Swami Juice

Post by wserra »

Stinky McGurk wrote:See where that New-Age nutcase Deepak Chopra is entering the mlm market.
Ah, the renowned winner of the 1998 Ig Nobel Prize for "his unique interpretation of quantum mechanics as it applies to life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic happiness."
Headed by Bill "Fruit Of The Loom" Farley, they're entering the network marketing arena with an amalaki berry juice called "Zrii".
Enter "amalaki" into PubMed (the index of some 20K articles from peer-reviewed medical journals) and you get precisely two results: (1) an article from Psychosomatics which concludes that over 90% of the web pages which contain the word also contain scientific BS, and (2) an article from a 1982 Indian medical journal (no abstract available) about using it to treat dyspepsia (indigestion).

I personally am tired of these hyper-expensive MLM nostrums coming from exotic locales - the Himalayas, the Amazon, the South Pacific. I want to see an MLM that sells an elixir made from the "cess berry" from the Newark sewers. Hey, where are plants under more evolutionary pressure - some pristine wild or under the streets of Newark?
They must be doing quite well according to this latest bulletin put out by the company:

[Snip propaganda.]

Just how, I wonder, would they know that?
Hey, what good is it to be a swami if you don't know things forbidden to ordinary folks?
"A wise man proportions belief to the evidence."
- David Hume
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Post by webhick »

wserra wrote:"cess berry" from the Newark sewers
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Stinky McGurk

Post by Stinky McGurk »

If you read the press releases, you'll learn that "The Chopra Center has whole-heartedly endorsed the Zrii brand."

Guess that depends on one's interpretation of "The Chopra Center". Reports are the workers there are somewhat less than enthuiastic about this partnership with Farley.

BTW, amalaki berries are more commonly known over here as the gooseberry.

Somehow, the people of India don't strike me as being the picture of health. If these amalaki berries are such a wonderous product, then why are the people over there that eat them so sickly? :?:
mike57

Post by mike57 »

Does anyone know how big these bottles of juice are, how many ozs? The price is 120.00 for 4 bottles, that's $30.00 a bottle! How many people with 2 brain cells to rub together will continue to spend that kind of money on juice? Whether you like him or not Deepak Chopra does have a big following so you might be able to sucker a few people into trying the stuff but once they realize that they just paid $120.00 for 4 bottles of juice the novelty will soon wear off and most probably won't reorder. Without a ton of repeat customers I don't see how a product like this will succeed. Most overpriced supplements seem to fizzle out like that.
Stinky McGurk

Post by Stinky McGurk »

In a 2005 interview with Time magazine, Chopra was asked: "IS IT TRUE THAT YOU MAKE $20 MILLION A YEAR?"

His answer:"I generate that, but it's not what I take home. I have this huge institution to run. I also have two foundations. I'm like a bank teller: I generate huge amounts of income, and it all goes out. I'm not a hoarder or saver. My lifestyle is not extravagant at all, other than the fact that I travel first class. My lifestyle is simpler now than it was 25 or 30 years ago, when I was a practicing physician."

So the question is, if he's taking in $20 million a year, why does he need to associate himself with a known con artist like Fruity Farley to bring a watered down fruit juice with few known health benefits to the market? Are reports that the Chopra Center for Wellbeing is in financial trouble possibly true?

To be fair, Deepak Chopra, he IS NOT the formulator and is holding Zrii at arms length. Apparently Deepak's connection to Zrii is providing product credibility by having his Chopra Center endorse the product which is a business deal whereby the product is endorsed and fees are paid to the endorser. About the same as athletes endorsing sports equipment; they didn't design it, they just let their name be associated with the product for payment and the unwary consumer figures the product is excellent.

As I said in the post above, it's this providing product credibility by the Chopra Center that is rumored to have a number of employees working there rather upset.
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Post by wserra »

Chopra appeared on Sanjay Gupta's CNN show just a couple of days ago. The video is here. I was kinda hoping that Gupta would ask the Buddha-robot some tough questions - such as why he is in the paid-endorsement business, and what that does for any credibility he has left.

Nope. It was an unalloyed love-fest. I particularly like the following exchange (at the very end of the piece):
GUPTA: One of the themes that you stream through a lot of your books, including "Buddha," is love and forgiveness. And you just mentioned getting out of toxic relationships, for example. Does that make a difference? A, in terms of aging, and B, in terms of your overall health? I mean ...

CHOPRA: Yes. When you have the experience of not only love but also compassion, which is a paradoxical thing, because compassion is the suffering with others. See, when you have the experience of shared suffering, which leads of course to compassion, which leads to love, then your body's homeostatic mechanisms, which is self- regulating mechanisms, fine tune themselves. And they know how it works. It's called limbic resonance.

Your limbic brain regulates self-referred, self feedback, and homeostasis in your body. But your limbic brain is very much connected to your emotional life as well. And you know, mammals have emotional lives. They live in close knit nurturing groups called families. And where there's an emotional bond, if the baby's emotionally bonded and feels safe, the baby's likely to be a healthy adult.

But even in adults, if you take care of emotional toxicity, if you make a person feel loved, if you -- for example, there's a study that I can quote where a nurse calls a patient once a week, and post infarction mortality drops very significantly...

GUPTA: Sure, right.

CHOPRA: ...if she calls the patient once a week to say we're thinking of you. We love you.

GUPTA: Just to show that compassion.

CHOPRA: Sure. And you know, of course, the speaker study where women who supported each other in a loving environment with breast cancer, the survival doubled. And they had to stop the study because they didn't want to have a control group.

GUPTA: Just love and forgiveness. I always smile when I see you. You make people feel cared about.
What nonsense. I know of no study, discontinued or otherwise, in which emotional support doubled survival in breast cancer patients. There are certain studies which show modest results along those lines, but acknowledge as well the multitude of factors in play. See, for example, here (actually finding that the ability to express emotion is more important than emotional support, although they are surely related) and here.

And, so far as "making people feel cared about", do you have a family member who died of breast cancer? Well, it's your fault for not showing her enough "love and forgiveness".
"A wise man proportions belief to the evidence."
- David Hume
Stinky McGurk

Post by Stinky McGurk »

Just when you thought you'd heard it all ...

Zrii Goose Juice is described on the company website as tasting Chopralicious! :lol:

Just when you thought you'd heard it all ...

The fruit (amalaki) is also host to rare ‘mighty molecules’ known as ascorbagins. :roll:
Stinky McGurk

Post by Stinky McGurk »

As a lawyer, Wes, you can probably fully appreciate Chopra. The guy is “sue” happy.

Chopra met the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder and leader of TM, in 1985. The Maharishi invited Chopra to study Ayurveda and that year Chopra became the founding president of the American Association for Ayurvedic Medicine.

In 1991, Chopra, when president of the American Association of Ayurvedic Medicine, submitted a report to the Journal of the American Medical Association, along with Hari M. Sharma, MD, professor of pathology at Ohio State University College of Medicine, and Brihaspati Dev Triguna, an Ayurvedic practitioner in New Delhi, India. Chopra, Sharma and Triguna claimed they were disinterested authorities and were not affiliated with any organization that could profit by the publication of their article.

Criticism from the Journal's readers over the validity of the article's argument led the associate editor to write a rebuttal in which he criticized the financial stake the authors had in validating and selling their products, the Hindu belief in yogic flying, and the basis of Chopra's ayurveda in TM.
(see: “The Maharhish Caper: Or How to Hoodwink Top Medical Journals").

Chopra responded by filing a $30 million suit in which he accused the Journal of defamation and bigotry. Chopra's lawyer claims that the suit was settled for an undisclosed amount but some critics, however, state that the suit was dismissed.

In 1993 Chopra published his breakthrough work, "Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old". The book contained unaccredited material developed by Robert Sapolsky, a professor of biology at Stanford University; Sapolsky filed a lawsuit over plagiarism on January 23, 1997.

A 1996 article in The Weekly Standard published the claim of a prostitute that Chopra had patronized her in 1991. Chopra filed suit against The Weekly Standard after the prostitute retracted her assertion, leading the magazine to publish an apology and pay Chopra's estimated $1 million in legal fees

The law firm representing a former Chopra employee who accused Chopra of sexual harassment was also sued; this suit was dismissed with prejudice by a judge who called the suit "frivolous" .

Chopra is currently being sued for $100 million by a former psychotherapist who claims that Chopra used portions of a copyrighted manuscript, Pattern Change Programming, Creating Your Own Destiny, in his 1994 book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (probably settled because this article is a bit old).

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’m sure there are a lot more juicy stories out there about this fakir.

One thing Chopra’s going to learn real quick is that if he wants to maintain the squeaky clean image he portrays to the public, then he made a mistake getting into the mlm arena selling his goose juice. That red dot on his forehead between his eyes and just below his turban makes a good target for people that want to the let the public know what this scumbag is really all about.

With the internet it’s pretty easy to dig up details of his past - and others of his ilk -. and put that information on line.

Don’t think you’re going to like what we publish, Chopper!
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Post by wserra »

Deepockets' website describes him as "one of the world's greatest leaders in the field of mind body medicine". Well, if the fawning interview Sanjay Gupta conducted with him (see my post above) is any indication of the meaning of "mind body medicine", the "field" just took a significant hit.

The current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Cancer (publication of the American Cancer Society) contains an article with the seriously dry title "Emotional well-being does not predict survival in head and neck cancer patients: a radiation therapy oncology group study". This Penn study, by far the largest to date, fails to find the relationship that Chopra claims (and on which he bases his claim to money) exists. The abstract is here. The timing of the article was clearly karma.

I can hear him now: "Well, that was breast cancer. This is head and neck cancer." Not to mention the hip bone connected to the thigh bone.
"A wise man proportions belief to the evidence."
- David Hume
Stinky McGurk

Post by Stinky McGurk »

Pretty heavy duty stuff for sure.

On a lighter note, at the recent Chicago kickoff, no one from the company would directly answer where the juice came from? Where it was manufactured, bottled and shipped from? They would simply say California but they wouldn’t say where, what company, or give any other details.

Why all the secrecy?

On a recent blog someone revealed that the bottling company was Triple H out of southern California. A company with a history of violations, by the way.

Zrii goes to great lengths to talk about the quality of the product: "Zrii is absolutely manufactured and blended with quality ingredients and processing through strict quality control procedures with no sugar added and without using fertilizers and pesticides."

That's certainly reassuring to know that no fertilizers or pesticides were used in the formulation.

Well, maybe not. Bill Farley sent out this recent memo to the troops...

"Additionally, we have conducted an extensive review of all our past product batches. As a result of this process, we isolated two specific batches of product that do not meet our strict quality control standards. These batches were shipped in mini bottles bearing the lot numbers S7272 and S7281. While we have precisely identified and resolved these concerns with our product moving forward, we recommend that you personally inspect any product bearing these lot numbers for your personal consumption only."

Right. There's a problem with these runs and you expect me to use them for my personal consumption only?

What happened to the "strict quality control procedures" you talked about earlier?

Given the history of TripleH, it's not surprising there are a few problems. Minor "hiccups" they're called on another bulletin.
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Post by wserra »

Stinky McGurk wrote:Right. There's a problem with these runs and you expect me to use them for my personal consumption only?
Well, he understands that, if you're a Zrii distributor, your brain isn't a vital organ.
"A wise man proportions belief to the evidence."
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Stinky McGurk

Post by Stinky McGurk »

The New York Times did an in depth investigation of Farley back in 2000 - Taking the Starch Out Of an American Icon.

"Mr. Farley ran Fruit of the Loom like an emperor, according to interviews with more than a dozen former company executives. Besides selecting the board, he used company money to buy art for corporate offices and his home, gave Fruit's money to his favorite charities, even controlled a portion of the pension fund investments, picking the stocks himself.

He was among the nation's highest paid chief executives, according to Graef Crystal, the compensation expert, who has called Mr. Farley a ''perennial compensation abuser.'' Mr. Farley earned over $40 million from 1996 to 1998, even though Fruit of the Loom lost $103 million during those years."


Among others abuses of power and siphoning off of company funds, we learn that...

"... the company is also pursuing other claims against him, including the possibility that he used company resources for a Czech MIG fighter plane he owned and stored at a Fruit of the Loom hangar in Bowling Green, according to lawyers familiar with the case."

Like what would anyone need a Czech MIG fighter plane for?

Quick trips to the Caymen Islands? :?:
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Post by wserra »

Anyone who wants a comprehensive picture of Farley should read this Times article from the beginning. It tells a detailed account of what an out-of-control executive and his lapdog board can do to a company.

Somebody got Deepockets' private email? Not that it would matter.
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Post by Stinky McGurk »

Anyone who wants a comprehensive picture of Farley should read this story about what happened when he set up shop in Northern Ireland. It tells a detailed account of what an out-of-control executive and his lapdog board can do to a country.

First, Fruit of the Loom acknowledged receiving about $43.5 million in grants from the Republic and $42.1 million from the United Kingdom. In return, approximately 2,700 workers in Donegal and Derry got low-paying jobs.

Didn't take Farley long to turn working conditions into a 3rd world sweat shop...

"Now that we have the factory open and it's in production, if you go and talk to the workers at Fruit of the Loom, you will find that many of them want out of the factory. They don't like working there because they're not treated with any dignity there. They're not treated with any dignity there because the Fruit of the Loom company was given to understand that if they came to Derry, so grateful would the people of this area be for their presence, that they could treat us any way at all."

Workers were too nervous about reprisals to permit themselves to be identified, but they say the situation in the Derry plants is dire. "Women are leaving every week," says one. "Just getting up and going." Approximately 2,000 workers, most of them female, are paid according to how much they produce. "You have to do 100 per cent of the quota before you get paid in full," one worker says. A similar situation exists in the Irish Republic. Some employees reported being kept after hours, unpaid, until they met their quota.


Fruit of the Loom's seedy deal: Irish labor ripe for picking.

And let's not forget Bill Farley's Christmas present to the tiny Donegal village of Raphoe.

"Despite the abundance of Christmas spirit evident in the town of 1,000, a dark cloud has descended on Raphoe since news broke two weeks ago that its Fruit of the Loom plant will be closing its gates in the new year. All 375 jobs will be lost.

Announcing the plant closures on December 9, the US-based firms' chief executive officer Bill Farley said the company had "resisted making this decision even though the economics of the situation indicate clearly that we should have done so a long time ago."


Nice timing, Bill.

I think one local resident summed it up nicely:

"By announcing the cuts in the month of Christmas, Bill Farley ruined Christmas for many people," said McNamee. "Even if you are a billionaire, it doesn't give you the right to be a jerk."

Job Cuts Bring Holiday Heartache
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Post by wserra »

And how much does it cost to get started in this wonderful opportunity? Well, it's not obvious, but they do tell you:
you start your business with this Essentials Pack for $499.95, the Pro Pack for $999.95 or the Premium Pack for $1499.95
Yikes! You mean that I have to pay you a minimum of $500 to sell your stuff? With Deepockets' endorsement, doesn't it just fly out of your hands?
"A wise man proportions belief to the evidence."
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Stinky McGurk

Post by Stinky McGurk »

Uh oh! Now you're going to probably have Fruity Farley mad at you, Wes.

Mentioning start up costs, along with any reference to Deepak Chorpa is a no-no. From a Zrii thread...
5) Start up costs are not to be listed (plus, they are listed excessively)
From those numbers you gave, no wonder they don't want anybody to mention them. Listed excessively? If those numbers aren't excessive, then I don't know what is.

But even better on that link you gave is the monthly autoship...
If you are $240 autoship qualified, when you sponsor a new Independent Executive, in their first month 40% of their volume is paid to you.
$240 monthly autoship and the company is only selling one product - gooseberry flavored water?

Anybody with an IQ higher than room temperature should see what's going on here. Farley's making money selling the opportunity and product to suckers. Does anybody realistically think they're going to build a customer base selling $40 a bottle goose juice?
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Post by wserra »

Deepockets' "really expensive spa weekend" business must be in a lull. He's endorsing another MLM.

This time it's "Healing Rhythms", a $300 computer program / breathing monitor combo which (according to Deepockets) "uses biofeedback to access your innate healing abilities to restore your physical, mental and spiritual health". Three hundred dollars for a program and simple monitor? Who do they think they are, Microsoft? And exactly how does it "restore your physical health", Dr. Chopra? Although a quite general claim, it is one susceptible of proof. What proof do you have?

This one is a showcase for endorsements by New-Age hucksters. Another endorser is Dr. Andrew Weil, he of the "impending total collapse of the health-care system" prophecy. Can I get some of what he's smoking? The same Dr. Weil who sees "relentless consumer demand for alternative therapies" from his perch relentlessly advocating and selling those "alternative therapies" - whatever they are. Do you think we should determine the effectiveness of those "alternative therapies" by majority vote? Apparently so, since he wants to "back away from materialism", the only means I know of to test anything. And the purpose of such backing is to "acknowledge mind/body interactions" - at the same time as neurophysiology is showing that there is no measurable "mind" independent of the brain - and "the whole emerging field of energy medicine".

"Energy medicine"? I think I heard about that on Star Trek once. It had something to do with Kirk saving his life by kissing a green alien.
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Stinky McGurk

Post by Stinky McGurk »

This nonsense about what you can and can't say about Deepak Chopra when talking about ZRII has reached new heights of silliness. Take the following example from a ZRII rep discussing the product...
Bill Farley, Chopra Center And Zrii

Bill just happens to be very good friends with the Chopra Center as he has always been into health and nutrition. It was the Chopra Center that led him to the discovery of the amalaki fruit and it was the Chopra Center that helped form a team of doctors to create Zrii. The Chopra Center told Bill that amalaki is the greatest fruit of all and that it is relatively unheard of in the West. In fact, the Chopra Center was so convinced of its value in nutrition that they were willing to be involved in endorsing the product as long as it past the test of intense scrutiny.
As long as it "past the test of intense scrutiny"?
Stinky McGurk

Post by Stinky McGurk »

If you want an idea of just what what a megalomaniac Bill Farley really is, just take a gander at his latest toy...

Image

"First quarter 2008 will also see the inaugural ZriiVost Tour! So, what is the “ZriiVost” you ask?

Zrii is in possession of a truly special vehicle. No, not the six BMW 750Li “Zriimers,” we are talking about a veritable land yacht! A full length, 45-foot Prevost bus, outfitted with all the goodies - satellite TV, plasma screens everywhere, sofas, kitchen, bathroom, shower, bedroom, even a full-size barbeque underneath! Prevost is known the world over as the premier manufacturer of premium touring coaches. Take a Prevost worth over $1 million, and envelop it with a stunning, full-body Zrii wrap – and you have a ZriiVost!

The Zrii Co-Founders and top IE leaders will be taking the ZriiVost to a city near you early next year. We can’t wait to embark on what will be a Tour for the ages. Imagine the ZriiVost rolling into your town. How would you and your prospects like to sit and discuss all things Zrii inside the ZriiVost before a Zrii opportunity meeting? Stop dreaming and start doing! Coming first quarter 2008!"


The company's can't even get it's production straightened around to fill it's juice orders, and here's Farley out purchasing/leasing a $1 million environment destroying, resource guzzling land yacht.

Un-friggin-believable!

Suppose not really, though. I mean, here's the same guy that bought a Czech MIG fighter jet with company funds when he was destroying Fruit of the Loom.

Interesting too that the company refuses to divulge exactly where it's juice is being manufactured. Why the secrecy? Any substance to the rumors the swami swill is being brought in from offshore?