Posts by OrphanCrow

65

Lawsuit Settlement Amounts

by Richard Oliver in

i have a legitimate question and i am not trying to start a fight.

i keep reading that there were 6 child abuse lawsuits that settled for 13 million dollars.

how do people like barbara anderson or jwsurvey or jwfacts come up with this number?

OrphanCrow

RO: And I know that I am going to be accused of being heartless. But to illustrate. Let's say that your a grown adult and you happen to move back and live with your parents after you got out of prison for murdering someone. Then you go out and murder someone else, should your parents be held legally liable for you murdering someone else? No, they are not. You're a fully grown adult where they have limited authority over even though you may live with them. Now if your parents gave you a gun and said I really hate that person I wish someone would kill them then that would be a different story. Now morally would they still be culpable over you committing a second murder, either way, that is up for each person to decide, but that is not what the law is.

Your illustration is incomplete.

To make a fair comparison, let's say that the parents, after they found out that their son murdered someone again, decided that they weren't going to tell the police. In fact, they weren't going to tell anyone - what would the neighbors think? So, they kept their son's secret.

Now, tell me...are the parents culpable in their son's murder? Are they "accessories after the fact"? Have the parents, by not telling the authorities about the murder, committed a crime themselves?

11

A petition in Russia for transforming a Kingdom Hall into a cultural space for young musicians.

by OrphanCrow in

jw
friends

someone in russia is paying attention to the jw property seizures.

this is a petition started in russia for transforming a kingdom hall into a cultural space for young musicians.. the petition is in russian so i have copied the google translate here:.

please mark out space for the development of musical creativity among young people!shtanko eugene - pechora, russiaapril 20, 2017 the supreme court declared extremist activity "administrative center of jehovah's witnesses in russia" and banned its operation.

OrphanCrow

Yeah, Darksp....I saw the "100" number and thought it looked strange.

Who knows? This could be a petition started by an exJW in Russia and not really representative of a community at all.

But, I do think it is a great idea. Just think of what a community could do with the nice, wide open space interior of a KH. I am thinking 6x12 snooker tables would fit quite nicely in them.

11

A petition in Russia for transforming a Kingdom Hall into a cultural space for young musicians.

by OrphanCrow in

jw
friends

someone in russia is paying attention to the jw property seizures.

this is a petition started in russia for transforming a kingdom hall into a cultural space for young musicians.. the petition is in russian so i have copied the google translate here:.

please mark out space for the development of musical creativity among young people!shtanko eugene - pechora, russiaapril 20, 2017 the supreme court declared extremist activity "administrative center of jehovah's witnesses in russia" and banned its operation.

OrphanCrow

DoubtingBro: Didn't one of the videos at the RC last year have a kid who decided to give up his dream of being a professional musician so he could pioneer or some such nonsense? Pretty ironic if that's the case.

That is exactly the video I thought of when I saw this petition. How ironic that a defunct KH might become a home to young aspiring musicians just like that JW child. The JW child who couldn't pursue his dreams because he might come in contact with non-JWs if he continued studying music.

dsp: quite fascinating - it really shows them up doesn't!!

I was quite fascinated with a personal story I read on a Russian forum. An exJW told of working on KH builds in Russia and about how they had to pretend to not be JWs while they were on site. They had to wear raggedy clothes and carry a pack of cigarettes in their pockets. If anybody was watching them, they would stop and pull out their smokes and stick one in their mouth. And, if anyone asked what was being built, it was never a building for religious purposes - it was a billiard hall or something else equally acceptable to the building code.

It wouldn't surprise me if some of the KHs in Russia were originally built as something else (by a local JW, of course) and then, after construction was complete, the JWs would buy it from the "owner" and convert it to a meeting place.

Of course, I am speculating...but it would be interesting to know the in's and out's of the WTS' Russian shenanigans. They did get into hot water a few years back for dumping toxic waste into the Gulf of Finland. And...if I have interpreted google translate correctly...some of the property that the WTS purchased in Russia was...tada! a toxic waste dump.

66

Huffington Post: When Is A Religion 'Extremist'? [Food for thought!]

by AndersonsInfo in

jw
friends

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/when-is-a-religion-extremist_us_590de8e3e4b046ea176aeb98.

tim rymel, m.ed.. governments who support “religious freedom” over the equal human rights and dignity of others condone, and even endorse discrimination.. 05/06/2017 11:27 am et | photo – flickr/ justin kern .

government endorsement of any religious ideology creates religious extremism.

OrphanCrow

orphancrow you make no sense by saying the violence is internal - what is that even supposed to mean?

It means that the org coerces the members to inflict violence upon themselves.

Socially passive violence in the sense that the violence is directed towards themselves - deliberately directed internally (internally in the sense that the violence is carried out within the insular society of JWs and internally in that it is the individual JWs who suffer the violence of both persecution and dying for the blood doctrine). The individual instigates the violence that others do to them - in the name of the organization.

The perfect martyr.

66

Huffington Post: When Is A Religion 'Extremist'? [Food for thought!]

by AndersonsInfo in

jw
friends

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/when-is-a-religion-extremist_us_590de8e3e4b046ea176aeb98.

tim rymel, m.ed.. governments who support “religious freedom” over the equal human rights and dignity of others condone, and even endorse discrimination.. 05/06/2017 11:27 am et | photo – flickr/ justin kern .

government endorsement of any religious ideology creates religious extremism.

OrphanCrow

The government in Russia is telling its people their thoughts are now illegal.

No. Their behavior is illegal.

Acting on their thoughts is illegal in Russia. Spreading their thoughts is illegal.

* "You pick up one end of the stick and you pick up both ends." What do you mean by this? I have no idea what you mean

66

Huffington Post: When Is A Religion 'Extremist'? [Food for thought!]

by AndersonsInfo in

jw
friends

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/when-is-a-religion-extremist_us_590de8e3e4b046ea176aeb98.

tim rymel, m.ed.. governments who support “religious freedom” over the equal human rights and dignity of others condone, and even endorse discrimination.. 05/06/2017 11:27 am et | photo – flickr/ justin kern .

government endorsement of any religious ideology creates religious extremism.

OrphanCrow

Fuck you! (not literally you but anyone telling me what group I can or cannot join)

Nobody is telling you that. Go ahead and do whatever you want.

No problem in joining whatever group you want to and believing whatever you want to allow to knock around inside your head.

Do it. Join. Believe. Act.

And then deal with the consequences.

11

A petition in Russia for transforming a Kingdom Hall into a cultural space for young musicians.

by OrphanCrow in

jw
friends

someone in russia is paying attention to the jw property seizures.

this is a petition started in russia for transforming a kingdom hall into a cultural space for young musicians.. the petition is in russian so i have copied the google translate here:.

please mark out space for the development of musical creativity among young people!shtanko eugene - pechora, russiaapril 20, 2017 the supreme court declared extremist activity "administrative center of jehovah's witnesses in russia" and banned its operation.

OrphanCrow

Someone in Russia is paying attention to the JW property seizures. This is a petition started in Russia for transforming a Kingdom Hall into a cultural space for young musicians.

The petition is in Russian so I have copied the google translate here:

Please mark out space for the development of musical creativity among young people!
Shtanko Eugene - Pechora, Russia
April 20, 2017 the Supreme Court declared extremist activity "Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia" and banned its operation. The court also ordered to pay to the state property of the organization, including and real estate. We, representatives of active youth of the city Pechora and sympathizers, urge to transfer the confiscated building to the balance of the sector of youth policy for the further development there is a basis for the development of amateur music groups. It will be a great help for the creative enthusiasm of talented and ambitious musicians, as very large number of them are forced to live in apartments and try to build in a creative neyute. To all the above, we can add that the availability of such a database will give an educational and cultural impetus for beginning musicians, who will be able to find like-minded people to gain experience in the field of works, performances, work with the equipment and organization of events.
Citizens, do not be indifferent! It is possible that this building will open another store or alkomarket, so think about what is best for the future of our city?
In principle, it will be enough and other premises, this building is given as one example.
This petition will be delivered to:
The administration of the municipal district "Pechora"
State Property Committee
Sosnora Andrey Mihaylovich

66

Huffington Post: When Is A Religion 'Extremist'? [Food for thought!]

by AndersonsInfo in

jw
friends

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/when-is-a-religion-extremist_us_590de8e3e4b046ea176aeb98.

tim rymel, m.ed.. governments who support “religious freedom” over the equal human rights and dignity of others condone, and even endorse discrimination.. 05/06/2017 11:27 am et | photo – flickr/ justin kern .

government endorsement of any religious ideology creates religious extremism.

OrphanCrow

EdenOne: Jehovah's Witnesses do not shun as an expression of their free will, but rather, they take that extremist behavior in obedience to organizationally directed shunning.

This is a critical observation.

You can extend that to "Jehovah's Witnesses do not ~~shun~~ (insert behavior, eg. write letters to the Russian government) as an expression of their free will, but rather, they take that extremist behavior in obedience to organizationally directed ~~shunning~~ (insert behavior - eg. what kind of medical treatment to accept, what kind of blood is okay and what is not...)

JW behavior, regardless of what it is, is "organized". The group as a whole - the true believers, that is - is a singular unit that is directed and controlled by a singular entity that demands loyalty to death. That death can be the result of following WT directions on blood or it can be death in a prison camp. The WTS doesn't care - as long as that loyalty is proven with the true believer's last breath.

That is extreme. Extreme loyalty, evidenced by willingness to die for the organization. The violence is internal.

9

Topic Preview - unable to select

by sir82 in

using firefox / windows 7.. can't select the size of the topic preview.

i click on the "none" (or any other choice) but nothing changes..

OrphanCrow

Me too

I am using Chrome

101

Site Updates

by Simon in

just a heads-up that i will be testing some updates this evening.. the nature of the changes means it's difficult to test every scenario in advance offline (translation: it's a lot more effort and i just can't be bothered) so i'm going to go with the "wing-it" approach:.

deploy, check for errors, try to fix errors before anyone else notices them.. i can switch between the new and old version pretty quickly so if there are significant issues, i'll rollback and revert the changes while i work on the fixes.

worse case is the pages won't display quite right (dates might be a giveaway) but a full page refresh should fix things.. http://www.refreshyourcache.com/en/home/.

OrphanCrow

Aaargh...the Topic Preview has stopped working for me.

It is stuck on "full"

It won't go back to "none"