thanks freedom
you know... they say you should always leave em laughing and always leave em wanting more, so maybe I should just make that my swan song.
It's been a slice..
cognizant dissident
JoinedPosts by cognizant dissident
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67
Germany, Octogenerian enters KH with Machine Gun
by skeeter1 inpensioner enters jehovah's witness church with machine gunpublished: 31 jul 09 09:13 cet.
an 82-year-old man who entered a meeting of jehovahs witnesses armed with a submachine gun, three magazines, a samurai sword and a knife has been arrested, bielefeld police reported on friday.. some 81 members of the church were gathered in their kingdom hall on dunlopstrae in the citys sennestadt district when a congregation member noticed the masked elderly man enter the vestibule waving the machine gun around 8:45 pm on thursday.. .
the witness quietly informed the congregation and directed them to escape the building via emergency exit, a police statement said.. .
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67
Germany, Octogenerian enters KH with Machine Gun
by skeeter1 inpensioner enters jehovah's witness church with machine gunpublished: 31 jul 09 09:13 cet.
an 82-year-old man who entered a meeting of jehovahs witnesses armed with a submachine gun, three magazines, a samurai sword and a knife has been arrested, bielefeld police reported on friday.. some 81 members of the church were gathered in their kingdom hall on dunlopstrae in the citys sennestadt district when a congregation member noticed the masked elderly man enter the vestibule waving the machine gun around 8:45 pm on thursday.. .
the witness quietly informed the congregation and directed them to escape the building via emergency exit, a police statement said.. .
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cognizant dissident
Wonder what set this guy off? Just happened tonight.
I'm guessing it must be the WTBTS's fault. He must have read one of their sexist articles on women dressing modestly and not dancing suggestively and just snapped and decided to take matters into his own hands. Damn sexy whores! I'll show them!
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Germany, Octogenerian enters KH with Machine Gun
by skeeter1 inpensioner enters jehovah's witness church with machine gunpublished: 31 jul 09 09:13 cet.
an 82-year-old man who entered a meeting of jehovahs witnesses armed with a submachine gun, three magazines, a samurai sword and a knife has been arrested, bielefeld police reported on friday.. some 81 members of the church were gathered in their kingdom hall on dunlopstrae in the citys sennestadt district when a congregation member noticed the masked elderly man enter the vestibule waving the machine gun around 8:45 pm on thursday.. .
the witness quietly informed the congregation and directed them to escape the building via emergency exit, a police statement said.. .
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cognizant dissident
On one hand I'm glad he didn't hurt anyone, on the other I wish he had.
Wishing that the guy had hurt someone, just to prove a point about the WT shunning policy to outsiders, is just the type of unbalanced perspective that puts the poster in the same "nutjob" category as the guy with the guns.
The only good thing that comes of situations like this is it exposes just how horrific the WTS's shunning policies are and how it literally tears families apart for absolutely no valid reason, other than someone doesn't believe their deranged doctrines anymore.
If you believe anything "good" come of situations like someone trying to annihilate a bunch of innocent people in a church, then you're just as unbalanced as the previous poster. Outsiders don't look at situations like this and think, "Oh, those JW's should rethink their deranged shunning policies". They think, "What a violent, deranged, nutjob. The WT obviously knew what they were doing when they kicked him out the first time!
I'm simply stating a fact: The Society's policy on shunning can and does drive people to the brink. I've already stated that it's obvious this guy is off his rocker and that it's entirely possible that the shunning pushed him over the edge.
The only people that the society's policies push to the brink of insane violence are people who are already insane and violent or sane people who willingly make the choice to use violence because they believe the end justifies the means or people who do not accept personal responsibility for controlling themselves as in, "the devil made me do it!" (or in this case the WTBTS). Sometimes you can find all three conditions in the same person!
You talk about there being "very little balanced perspective in the blame game being played here", yet you don't seem to be very balanced in your assessment yourself. You give several examples of people who have a history of violent behaviour as though every single person who suddenly snaps must possess the same traits. Guess what? Not everyone who commits a violent act has a violent history.
Guess what? I wasn't suggesting that they do. I gave examples of people with a history of violence only to show that we cannot just assume that this man snapped because of the JW shunning policy and also, we cannot assume that other people who do were otherwise normal, peaceful people who just snapped one day because of the abusive stress put on them by the WT.
My other example only demonstrates that personal choice is possible, even in the young and impressionable and most vulnerable members of the org. There are many, many people who choose not to follow the org's rules and still associate with their relatives, some openly and some secretly.
I gave them because I know they are true (not speculation) as I have personal knowledge of them, and I provided them as a counterbalance to the views being presented. Providing possible alternative scenarios, is an attempt to try and reach a balanced assessment of the situation. Refusing to consider the possibilities that your speculations may, in fact, be untrue, isn't.
Cog
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67
Germany, Octogenerian enters KH with Machine Gun
by skeeter1 inpensioner enters jehovah's witness church with machine gunpublished: 31 jul 09 09:13 cet.
an 82-year-old man who entered a meeting of jehovahs witnesses armed with a submachine gun, three magazines, a samurai sword and a knife has been arrested, bielefeld police reported on friday.. some 81 members of the church were gathered in their kingdom hall on dunlopstrae in the citys sennestadt district when a congregation member noticed the masked elderly man enter the vestibule waving the machine gun around 8:45 pm on thursday.. .
the witness quietly informed the congregation and directed them to escape the building via emergency exit, a police statement said.. .
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cognizant dissident
Well, we can speculate about the poor, loving father, who only wants to see his daughter and he was driven to violence that was out of his character by the WTBTS, but in reality we don't know this is true.
People who are reactively violent often have a history of acting out with violence and trying to use force to get their way whenever they are under stress. Then they blame the external stressful circumstance instead of their own ability to cope in socially acceptable (non-violent) ways.
A few weeks ago, a poster on this board told me his JW daughter's teenage friend was chased around the house by her JW father with a hammer. She fled for her life to a sister's house and is afraid to return home. Now if she reports him and he gets shunned and he reacts violently and comes after her again, or the elders, did the society drive him to that behaviour due to their shunning policy?
A woman in the congo I grew up in was murdered by her df'd husband who was being shunned. He held her and his two children hostage at gunpoint in a police standoff. The police talked him into letting the kids go then he shot his ex-wife and killed her. Just for the record, she divorced him and he was df'd for being abusive and violent. A decade later, I saw him interviewed in prison, for a tv documentary and he still blames her and the WTBTS for driving him to violence. According to the logic many are using on this thread, he would be justified in blaming the WTBTS.
My point is this: there are many reasons that people are violent, mental illness being only one of them. We don't know any of the history on this person but many are automatically quick to blame the society for anything that goes wrong in their lives. If someone is violent and abusive and doesn't get df'd, it's automatically the society's fault. If someone is violent and gets df'd, then that's the society's fault too. There is very little balanced perspective in the blame game being played here.
The society is psychologically manipulative and coercive and they use fear, guilt and shame to try and control people (as do most religions and the Bible). However, they have never advocated the use of physical force to control anyone (which is more than can be said for most other religions), so to lay the responsibility for the physical violence of everyone remotely associated with them at their doorstep is a huge stretch of credulity.
Cog
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67
Germany, Octogenerian enters KH with Machine Gun
by skeeter1 inpensioner enters jehovah's witness church with machine gunpublished: 31 jul 09 09:13 cet.
an 82-year-old man who entered a meeting of jehovahs witnesses armed with a submachine gun, three magazines, a samurai sword and a knife has been arrested, bielefeld police reported on friday.. some 81 members of the church were gathered in their kingdom hall on dunlopstrae in the citys sennestadt district when a congregation member noticed the masked elderly man enter the vestibule waving the machine gun around 8:45 pm on thursday.. .
the witness quietly informed the congregation and directed them to escape the building via emergency exit, a police statement said.. .
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cognizant dissident
I beg to differ. The WTS most certainly has and does drive people to this kind of behaviour, because they literally can take everyone you love away from you for good. Imagine suddenly never seeing your son or daughter or grandkids again, solely because the leaders of the religion says so. You think this isn't enough to cause someone to snap? This guy may indeed have had some mental problems to begin with, so perhaps the shunning pushed him over the edge.
This isn't the first time this has happened and it won't be the last. Wasn't there another ex-Witness out in Washington or Oregon who snapped a couple of years ago because of the shunning policy?
The only good thing that comes of situations like this is it exposes just how horrific the WTS's shunning policies are and how it literally tears families apart for absolutely no valid reason, other than someone doesn't believe their deranged doctrines anymore.
Sorry, I'm not buying it. People have personal choice to how they respond to everything, including shunning. JW's have a personal choice whether they go along with the society's shunning policies. They choose the religion over their family members. That is their responsibility.
I am well aware of how psychologically devasating shunning is to families. When I was 1o years old, my mother was disfellowshipped and my father got custody of my brother and me. He tried to get her visitation rights revoked because she was bad association. She called her lawyer and he nixed that. Then he tried to psychologically pressure us to voluntarily shun her (he was an elder). At 12 years old, I had the strength to stand up to my domineering father, who was a bully and beat us for the slightest disobedience. I refused to shun my mother.
When I was in the sixth grade, a teacher (not a JW) thought she would teach a classmate, (my best friend), a lesson for disobedience on some trivial issue. She sent the girl out of the class on some flimsy excuse and then ordered the rest of the class not to talk to her and not to tell her why. The girl came back bewildered. She asked the girls at our table why no one would speak to her and they ignored her, silent. She looked over at me (her best friend) with pleading in her eyes, on the verge of tears, and asked me what was going on? I glanced at the teacher and I could see her eyes burning a warning look into me. (This teacher was a big fan of psychological mind games). I turned to my friend and told her everything, with the whole class staring at me and giving me dirty looks. The teacher turned purple, but she didn't say a word to me. I got the silent treatment too for the rest of the day and I just ignored it and talked to my friend like nothing was changed.
If an 11 and 12 year old child, who has been raised as a JW, just knows in their gut it is wrong to treat people this way, and can find the courage to stand up to the adults in authority, then so can anyone. It is a choice.
I was also shunned myself for three years when I was 18. It was devastating to me, but I at no time, felt any desire to kill anybody over it, least of all my old friends at the K.H. Of course, my uber dub, father joined in the shunning, as I knew he would, but my mother, who was reinstated by this time, didn't. Same daughter, different parents, different choice.
JW's are not the only ones who shun people. People of all religions and all walks of life cut family and friends out of their lives all the time for one reason or another. Let's face it, you're not really against shunning all family members. We want the WTBTS to shun pedophiles, remember? How do we know this guy was not abusive to his daughter in some way and he was one of the ones who was df'd? We only know his side of the story. For myself, I have no problem shunning pedophiles, and violent people of all cultures, religions and genders. That's just me, though, and where I draw my personal line. Some people choose to draw thiers over much more trivial things, like others not agreeing with them.
Regardless of whether the shunning was justified or not, the response of a normal, sane, mentally balanced person to being shunned is not to strap on enough fire power to take out a kingdom hall full of men, women, children, and elderly people who may not even have met you and may just be visiting for the day. Everyone on this planet has the right to say to anyone else, "hey you know what, I don't like you or your beliefs and I choose not to associate with you." That includes family members. That's why df'd persons who take the WTBTS to court over shunning, have yet to win a case.
However, no one has the right to say, "Oh yeah, you won't associate with me, then I'm going to blow your head off!". Just think of all the abusive partners who love to blame their spouse for their abuse. "He/she drove me to it!" They rarely take responsibility for their own violent reactivity.
I stand by my original statement that the WTBTS doesn't drive anybody to do anything as if they are helpless to resist. Everyone has a choice. His daughter made hers and he made his. Some of the people on this forum are so unbalanced by their hatred of everything WTBTS, that they can no longer tell right from wrong and feel the end justifies the means. Or, they are so used to giving over their personal responsibility to the WTBTS and it's rules that even after they've left they continue to do so. If it is still ruling your life, to the point that your hatred blinds you and skews your judgement, then you are still in prison, aren't you?
Cog
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Germany, Octogenerian enters KH with Machine Gun
by skeeter1 inpensioner enters jehovah's witness church with machine gunpublished: 31 jul 09 09:13 cet.
an 82-year-old man who entered a meeting of jehovahs witnesses armed with a submachine gun, three magazines, a samurai sword and a knife has been arrested, bielefeld police reported on friday.. some 81 members of the church were gathered in their kingdom hall on dunlopstrae in the citys sennestadt district when a congregation member noticed the masked elderly man enter the vestibule waving the machine gun around 8:45 pm on thursday.. .
the witness quietly informed the congregation and directed them to escape the building via emergency exit, a police statement said.. .
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cognizant dissident
Wow! Some of you people are so unbalanced, like the poster who said they kind of wished he had hurt someone.
I'm no fan of shunning, but the WTBTS doesn't "drive" anyone to this kind of behaviour. The guy is obviously a nutjob with mental health issues.
Irrespective of JW's or their shunning policy, this man is so deranged that perhaps his daughter doesn't associate with him for that reason. I'm sure that is a wise decision and she'll be better off for it.
Cog
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Any DF'd or DA'd people ever get visits from Elders?
by drew sagan injust saw the thread from otwo talking about the call he got from an elder who wanted to meet up.
it go me thinking about my own situation.
me and my wife have been gone for a while.
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cognizant dissident
3.5 years and still awaiting my first visit. I stopped holding my breath a few years ago.
I feel so unloved!
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65
How about a new happy thread...the best thing that happened to you this month!
by restrangled inthe best thing for me..... my son stopped over and he realized he needs to buy a home....so we quickly did a run on the internet in our neighborhood and he found a jewel.. whether he gets it or not....it was fun for both my husband and myself to go see, help him ask questions and give him the ok.. it's probably just a dream, but reminded us of our younger days.. how was your day?
something happy please!!!!
we have enough horrible negatives going on right now..
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cognizant dissident
Hillary Step bought me coffee yesterday.
No way!
BTS
Yes Way! lol What are you jealous BTS?
I am!!! I liked that guy.
Me too Beks, but I hope he isn't lurking and reads this thread or he will think I'm pretty pathetic if that was the highlight of my month! (Hey it's been a bad month for me!) Actualy, I had another pretty cool thing happen on the first weekend of this month. A woman who was one of my closest JW friends, left her husband and "the troof" about 10 years ago. She just assumed all her JW friends would shun her and so she moved and left no address or number and I lost contact with her. That was the beginning of my serious doubts and shunning is something I've never agreed with or done even as a JW. I've had all these old school chums contacting me on facebook, so I thought I would try to find her there. I found her daughter and asked her to contact her mom and ask if she would email or phone me. She did right away! We talked back and forth for a few months, then I invited to stay and she came. We picked up where we left off, like 10 years hadn't even gone by. Nice how you can just do that with some people eh? Since leaving, I have made a few good friends from JWD: Belbab and his wife, Hillary Step, and Ilbh. It's nice to know there are some great men out there (there sure aren't many in the org; I guess all the smart ones leave!). However, one thing I really miss is the close women friends I had while in. I really feel that companionship of women is the only thing I lost on leaving. So, now I have a girlfriend again! She sends me recipes and we went to a chick flick and actually cried! (Don't see"My Sister's Keeper" unless you are in the mood to bawl!) So that's too good things that happened to me this month!
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How about a new happy thread...the best thing that happened to you this month!
by restrangled inthe best thing for me..... my son stopped over and he realized he needs to buy a home....so we quickly did a run on the internet in our neighborhood and he found a jewel.. whether he gets it or not....it was fun for both my husband and myself to go see, help him ask questions and give him the ok.. it's probably just a dream, but reminded us of our younger days.. how was your day?
something happy please!!!!
we have enough horrible negatives going on right now..
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cognizant dissident
Hillary Step bought me coffee yesterday.
No way!
BTS
Yes Way! lol What are you jealous BTS?
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65
How about a new happy thread...the best thing that happened to you this month!
by restrangled inthe best thing for me..... my son stopped over and he realized he needs to buy a home....so we quickly did a run on the internet in our neighborhood and he found a jewel.. whether he gets it or not....it was fun for both my husband and myself to go see, help him ask questions and give him the ok.. it's probably just a dream, but reminded us of our younger days.. how was your day?
something happy please!!!!
we have enough horrible negatives going on right now..
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cognizant dissident
Hillary Step bought me coffee yesterday.