Perry, thank you for sharing that, it was very inspiring! We all live in this world yet, each one sees differently, some choose focus on what is ugly and negative, and yes sometimes those things are inescapable, BUT when there is an opportunity to see the grandness and beauty of this world we should take it in and live that moment, this way when life is not so pretty we can close our eyes and relive the beauty and gather ourselves and keep going!
Thank you for sharing,
IC
our dear mouthy is really having a tough time right now and needs our support and/or prayers.
as some of you may know, she's already lost 3 of her children in death and the other one to the borg.
in the last couple of days, she's had to worry about her 2 year old great-granddaughter being in the hospital with an illness and yesterday, her daughter had a suspicious mole removed from her back and was told there is a lump in her breast which has to be biopsied.
(((((((((((((Grace))))))))))))))) I hope everything turns out well, you are in our thoughts,
Love IC
in view of the breathtaking mistakes made by the governing body in the last 10 years, the time has come for all with influence in or out of the organization of jehovah's witnesses to ask for the resignation of the entire governing body.
<br>in the past 5 years alone, we have seen the defacto president of the watchtower society, theodore jarascz, dismiss reporters from the bbc without addressing their questions about sex abuse; they have denied repeatedly that there is a problem in the 2 witness to sex abuse policy; they have arranged the excommunication of whistleblowers in the organization, implying that they are spiritually deficient or worse.
<br>thousands of members of this fellowship have been sexually abused by family or friends in the group, only to be told that it didn't happen, that they misunderstood it, and if they could not produce a second witness or the accused confessed, they were told that they must be silent or face shunning.
I really think they are irrelevant, pretty much puppets now, the ones that I think are really running the show is the Writing dept., the Svc. Dept. Legal Dpt., and most of all the stockholder (s) whoever they are, this racket is filling the pockets of someone out there!
IC
hi all, i came across these articles......and wondered why our "news" media would have left this out.
health care in cuba effective meningitis vaccine produced in cuba - scidev.net cuba winning cancer race .
ic
Hi all, I came across these articles......and wondered why our "news" media would have left this out.
Health Care in Cuba Effective meningitis vaccine produced in Cuba - SciDev.Net Cuba Winning Cancer Race
IC
j.j. luna is the author of the book.. 'how to be invisible'.
.
in the book, this author refers to using jw's for your cleaning services because of their rep as being honest and maintaining your privacy.. does anyone here know this author and if so,, was this author a former or current j-dub?.
You beat me to it! I was going to post this, as it is making the rounds in JW circles, I think the author must be a JW or hasn't done much research into how many JW's have been accused for fraud, theft and are sitting in jail for various offenses, it's just an illusion painted by the WTS to make the R & F feel like they are God's special chosen people !
IC
i started making a list of what we really know about jehovah from the bible.
see if you can add to the list.. 1. likes to take afternoon walks, especially when it's breezy.. 2. likes the smell of roasting animals.. 3. likes dancing and singing but doesn't necessarily dance and sing himself.. 4. can write a little bit, though only with one finger.
usually gets humans to write for him instead.. 5. seems to like cheap magic tricks, like talking donkeys and magic burning bushes.. 6. always resorts to violence to solve problems instead of dialogue or diplomacy.. 7. he can reproduce asexually.. 8. he likes to be called father and he has sons, but his "wife" is a group of sexless spirits, who are also his sons.. any more??.
22. He became angered when humans built a tall building once that could reach heaven (about 300ft. heaven was pretty low back then) in Babel but didn't seem to mind them building pyramids that where taller in Egypt or at the present time where buildings are much much taller and man has even traveled beyond what was once considered heaven, go figure !
IC
to answer alligator wisdom's request for more info on myself...it will have to come out in trickles.
i am a prolific writer if i allow myself.
for now, i will tell you that until recently i was an elder.
Welcome aboard Snakes, I hope to hear more of your story, my family and I faded also, last meeting was about a year ago, freedom is so great!!!! This past memorial was the first one we missed since becoming a witness about 30 years ago. I feel for you, having to sit through that CRAP but hey, ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Good luck to you!
IC
hello everyone, a few weeks ago i was researching china and their emerging status as a super power, i learned about the bric alliance which is an alliance formed by brazil, russia, india and china, the projected growth of their economies and the support they are providing for each other, pretty interesting stuff.
my husband and i have been commenting on how it seems that russia and china are joining forces (even had joint exercises with their militaries), then there is venezuela and the support they have received from russia, iran and china, it all seems like there will be a future conflict involving these nations and the us, unfortunately.
i just found the following article which also spiked my interest since it brings home the point that this country is wasting it's resources and it's fighting force on this supposed war on terror while the real enemy is empowering itself.
Hello everyone, a few weeks ago I was researching China and their emerging status as a Super Power, I learned about the BRIC Alliance which is an alliance formed by Brazil, Russia, India and China, the projected growth of their economies and the support they are providing for each other, pretty interesting stuff. My husband and I have been commenting on how it seems that Russia and China are joining forces (even had joint exercises with their militaries), then there is Venezuela and the support they have received from Russia, Iran and China, it all seems like there will be a future conflict involving these nations and the US, unfortunately. I just found the following article which also spiked my interest since it brings home the point that this country is wasting it's resources and it's fighting force on this supposed war on terror while the real enemy is empowering itself. I hope I am wrong, but I have a feeling that in the next 20 years, we might be facing a real threat to the US!
The Nuclear Threat From China
By Mark Helprin Sunday, March 4, 2007; Page B07
Before rejoicing over detente with Kim Jong Il, it might be useful to remember that although agreements were reached in the past, his countrymen later built a number of nuclear weapons and carried out a test. Also, North Korea, with a rich chemical and biological arsenal having long ago neutralized American tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, has embarked solely on a program of survival by extortion and will gladly forfeit a power it does not need in exchange for recognition and some essential commodities. The Asian nuclear power of which we must take account is not North Korea but China.
The forerunners of China's government were able to defeat Chiang Kai-shek, fight the United States to a draw in Korea and, merely by means of their country's looming potential, help defeat America in Vietnam. This they did in chaos, poverty and without modern arms, but with strategy bred in the bone. Since 1978, using their extraordinary and sustained economic and technical growth to build military capacity, the Chinese have deliberately modeled themselves on the Meiji (who rapidly transformed feudal Japan into an industrial state able to vanquish the Russian fleet at Tsushima).
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Reddit FacebookIn altering their position relative to that of the United States, the Chinese have received generous assistance from the past two American presidents, who have accomplished first a carefree diminution of our orders of battle and then the incompetent deployment of what was left, in a campaign analogous to losing a protracted struggle with Portugal. China advances and we decline because, among other things, its vision is disciplined and clear, while ours is burdened by fear, decadence and officials who understand neither Chinese grand strategy nor its nuclear component.
This has led the United States unwittingly to encourage China to move toward nuclear parity. In the next five years, as we reduce our arsenal from 10,000 strategic warheads to 1,700, China's MIRV'd silo-based missiles and imminent generations of MIRV'd mobile and sea-based ICBMs will easily allow a breakout from warhead numbers now variously estimated to range from 80 to 1,800.
Once, the vast imbalance (in 1987, 500:1) might have discouraged China from such augmentation, but no longer. Our reductions and their growth provide fewer targets for more missiles and will create the possibility and therefore the temptation, however remote, of a first strike. As we have cut the stable sea-based leg of our nuclear deterrent from 37 ballistic missile submarines to 14, China works to build its own and a fleet that can provide protected bastions at sea as well as hunt down the small number of American boats on station.
Nuclear competition between mature and newly emerging powers is neither unprecedented nor unexpected, but the rule has always been that if nuclear potential exists it must be countered. Although we may no longer subscribe to this, China does. Aware that the United States planned to use nuclear weapons had China violated the Korean armistice, China would understandably seek nuclear balance, if not preponderance.
The danger lies not solely in quantitative instabilities but in potential nuclear strategies that technical evolution has elevated above Cold War paradigms. It is one thing for a few experts to foresee these strategies but quite another to obtain from a people no longer confident of its right to self-defense the political consensus, appropriations and authority to counter them. Consider just one scenario, highlighted by the recent successful test of China's anti-satellite weapon, part of a strategy to exploit technological asymmetries.
Given China's appetites and our alliances and interests, a war is not inconceivable in Taiwan, or in Korea. To remove American nuclear escalation from the equation, China would need not parity but only a deterrent such as it has long possessed. The Chinese, however, whose nuclear thresholds are dissimilar to ours, would have other options.
They know that every facet of America's economy, military and society depends on individual and networked electronic devices. Were these to fail all at once and irreparably, the nation would seize up, perhaps for years.
Faced with victory, or with loss, they might choose to -- and who would venture to guarantee that they would not? -- detonate half a dozen high-megatonnage nuclear charges in the mesosphere, in an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) strike perhaps not even in American airspace, cooking almost every circuit and semiconductor, rendering the American government blind, deaf and dumber than it is already and the country unable to resist the inroads that would surely follow.
Though we would undoubtedly respond in kind, China is not as technically dependent as are we. Nor, given China's sufficiency for a counterstrike, could we deter an EMP attack with the prospect of massive retaliation, especially because an EMP strike, with no immediate casualties, would seem as peaceful as snow in still air.
The trick in nuclear strategy is to maintain stability by balancing potentials and thus to discourage events from converting the hypothetical to the actual. Required in this case -- only one of many -- is the electronic hardening, redundancy and redesign of essential systems and networks; and missile defense, which would not only close the first-strike window by shielding our second-strike capacity from destruction but protect against an EMP strike directly and dissuade China in the first place by making its deterrent less certain.
Were we to proceed along these lines, we could diminish the chances that China might in the not-so-distant future be tempted to win a nuclear war without fighting a nuclear war. But given that we have ignored explicit warnings of the congressionally chartered EMP commission, what are the chances that we will act on an opinion we dare not even form? In regard to war and the sometimes counterintuitive actions for avoiding it, we are no longer either confident or clearsighted. What a pity to have come so far to find that our rivals and enemies all over the world can run rings around us because half of our politicians have lost their intelligence and the other half have lost their nerve.
Mark Helprin, a novelist, is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and a distinguished visiting fellow at Hillsdale College. This article will also appear in the Claremont Review of Books.
IC
william miller.. do you know how important this man has been to your life?
do you know your life would have been entirely different (without a doubt) had he not lived?.
read on!.
Terry thank you so much for your effort in writing that! It was very informative, I had read up on the Millerites but never with so much detail and put into that format. I really look forward to your next installment.
IC
why does the watchtower exist in this modern day world?.
it started off because someone wanted power, authority and control.
are those still the main reasons?
For the same reason all other religions are, I think they are here because the government needs them or thinks they need them to exist in order to keep the people passive, orderly and paying their taxes like good little drones. The government give's religions tax exempt status and other perks, they wouldn't do this if there was nothing in it for them. Most mainstream religions get mixed up in politics and politicians are only too happy to cater to them in exchange for their votes. The JW's on the other hand don't vote, but if they did what would they be, democrats or republicans? I think that they would probably vote republican with the rest of the christian conservatives, by staying out of politics they automatically favor the democrats, which may be the reason Hillary Clinton and Marilyn Allbright donated money to the Watchtower, maybe my conspiracy theory ideas are in overdrive, but it's a thought. Also, I think they help keep the stores in business, if we tallied up the yearly cost of all those suits, ties, dress shoes and briefcases for the males and the dresses, purses, matching accessories for the females that's quite a bit of money the stores are making off of the JW's. The assemblies, meetings and memorial are mini fashion shows, I remember well, damn I'm glad those days are over!
IC
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