i know that the wt bible & tract society is a corporation with a board of directors, but who actually owns the corp.?
aren't non-profit, eh hum, corporations supposed to have records available to the public?
there's also that bs annual meeting that 'privileged' get invited to, last i heard it was held at the stanley theatre, which fulfills the requirement for non-profits to have their annual meeting.
maybe it differs state to state.
anyway, not to sure on the laws re: non-profits and public access, if it's a matter of physically going to a records office and requesting information or not.
do you remember when we used to ask for a 'contribution that covers the printing cost' for the mags?.
was that ever the real cost of printing the mags?
afterall, we had to pay for the wretched things when we collected them, so was the wt society already making a profit from us foolish sheep which we then tried to recoup from the unsuspecting public.. were we conned?
[What a schmuck I was for all those years]
be happy you're now un-schmucked.
in the march 2007 issue of quadrant, an "australian review journal of literature and ideas", there is a small biography entitled:.
bedevilled: growing up jehovah's witness.
by ashlley morgan shae.. i read the article last night.
amazing, heartbreaking story.....and very well written.
i found her email address and sent her a note yesterday but i haven't heard back.
in the march 2007 issue of quadrant, an "australian review journal of literature and ideas", there is a small biography entitled:.
bedevilled: growing up jehovah's witness.
by ashlley morgan shae.. i read the article last night.
thanks for uploading this, i can't wait to give it a read.
in the march 2007 issue of quadrant, an "australian review journal of literature and ideas", there is a small biography entitled:.
bedevilled: growing up jehovah's witness.
by ashlley morgan shae.. i read the article last night.
if you could scan the story, that'd be great. it's not on the website as far as i can tell.
thanks.
question.
i'm not sure if this has ever been brought up before (probably has) but something just occurred to me...why were there always dubs guarding the donation boxes outside out of the conventions (in the hallways.)?
i mean i know the obvious reason behind it...very north korea-esque if you ask me, but we were told over and over just how special and christian and different we were from the world.... i'm looking for your theories on this.
i was a special attendant at an assembly, which was security. you wouldn't believe how much shit goes on at assemblies that are kept on the down-low. they have people with binoculars in dark rooms that you can't see surveying the whole crowd and attendants implanted throughout the stadiums. it's very well organized.
we had a guy get in a yelling fight with someone, ran to his car and grabbed something shinny out of his trunk...we were on the walkies calling out, 'he's carrying, the dude has a gun and is coming back', they did the brother surround thing they do and asked for his gun which turned out to be a can of mace.
and, 'apostates' would try to call us all back to headquarters and get on our frequencies. they were actually pretty lame b/c we had codes that were pretty easy to figure out, but they never did over the four days.
last assembly i went to, a bunch of people were reading the bible through loud speakers and screaming jws were wrong as we walked to our cars and brothers were around them and everyone pretended like they weren't there. i live in the city, so if someone is yelling or being obnoxious in my ear space i'll tell them to shut the fuck up. which i did, to my wife's horror. i don't care if i agree with them, but the whole protest thing is lame when it's irritating....there are smarter ways to help expose the jws. being antagonistic just gives them 'joy' for being persecuted.
anyway, heavy security at assemblies, very tied in together through walkie talkies, etc., nothing goes unnoticed.
i was raised in the witnesses from the 1960's on and my dad was an elder who invariably was taking care of congregation problems with publishers, constantly.
how many of us remember wives and children sitting at the back of the halls waiting for an after meeting elders meeting to finish, only to get more frustrated as an hour or so would go by?
for those of us raised in this it was always congregation business first, family second.
many, many, many times i had to wait for my dad in his elders meetings that were always only going to be a few minutes and my mom, sis and me would wait two hours in an empty kingdom hall on a school night.
boring as HELL. my dad was a dick. helped everyone in the congregation at the expense of our sanity.
but, once an elder, it's like the mafia, you really have to fight to get out and not have everyone on your ass that you've secretly sinned. i have a friend trying to get out now. they're going to put him through shit b/c the elder body has no comprehension of putting his family first, everyone who steps down automatically gets investigated and pressured to stay in.
i think he's so frustrated with these tactics he's going to end up inactive pretty quick if he can do a soft fade.
i remember, once i got my 'privileges' back, the elders slammed me w/ the watchtower desk, attendant duties, microphone duties, all this stuff i didn't want, didn't even ask for, they just announced it from the platform. we moved out of that hall fast b/c they would've been up my ass forever for not getting excited that i was being 'used'.
back to being a kid in an empty kingdom hall, there's only so many doodles you can do on time slips while waiting....at least now there's cell phones and laptops and blackberrys and vid games.
<!-- .style1 { font-family: arial; font-size: 18px; color: #009933; } .style2 { font-family: arial; font-size: 16px; color: #009933; } .style3 { font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; } .style4 {font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic; } --> how did being referred to as a brother or sister make you feel?the term brother always reminded me of being in some militant or holy roller religion.
during my tenure as a jehovahs witness, i brought it to the elders attention to refer to .
me by using my first or last name when addressing me.
back in 1997, if you knew how to install an operating system on a computer you could make $60 being a sys admin, of course, continuing to come up to speed, but i did everything like baptism by fire.
corporate life sucked, i liked the money and the freedom of the money, but, i'm honest now and know i'm unemployable in that type of atmosphere. i looked around the board room in my 20's when i was leading a project and saw everyone in their 40's, rich as hell, but their faces didn't have an ounce of contentment on them or pleasure with what we were doing. the light bulb went off and i got out after that.
i lightened things up where i worked though, we were the windows NT server group, so i started calling everyone my NT brothers. the rest of the company had 'issues' with using NT b/c they had a stake in Unix, so we were a necessary evil. it was funny, after a few months, we were calling each other 'brother raymond', 'brother mike'. it was brothers of the NT. i almost bought white mechanics uniforms for us to wear w/ our names as brother ____ on them until the company went topsy turvy and changed direction.(forever the performer i was and trying to keep things fun in an idiot environment...thus, probably why the elders had it out for me from a very young age b/c i was trying to keep being a witness fun.)
i was still 1/2 'in' the org at the time.
it felt phoney w/in the org in many circumstances, and there were times when it felt authentic, while those times were rare, but so were finding authentic people in there.
i now call a few close friends brothers and sisters....actually kind of have a film related frat thing i was in where once you're in you're in for life and we refer to each other as brothers. that feels authentic.
the one book study i made a few years ago they called me by my first name. i noticed it. and everyone else was brother. they know my last name. so now, i think if you're inactive you can't be addressed as brother or sister from the platform.
yep, they can read hearts b/c hearts are readable by how many hours you put down on a time slip.
would there be a backlash from current jws if the blood transfusion ban was lifted and made completely a conscience matter?.
i suspect, that only those who had lost a close relative would be bothered.
the others would just be relieved that they didn't have to worry about this traumatic issue anymore and they would carry on as ususal.. so, what is it, except for fear of legal action, that is stopping the ban being lifted?
[I say, if you want to keep a secret from a Jehovah's Witness, put it in the Watchtower magazine.]
that's brilliant.
the jw lady i work with went to summer convention last week and the following days were pure sheeeeite.
all week i could hear her a row over trying to fill everyone with her crazy spirit.
i could not find my mp# until thursday and by then i was totally pissed off.
actually in california the boss would put the kaput on that w/ the first complaint.
reminded me when i did a temp job about 7 years ago and i had a goatee, and a lady had a jw calendar on her wall and i was being nice and asked her what k. hall she went too and she told me and i knew a bunch of people from there. and she flipped out on me b/c i had facial hair and said i should go back to meetings and all this stuff. it's amazing how non-christian this supposed christian religion is. i doubt jesus would've flipped out on me for having a beard....he probably would've asked for tips on how to shape it to make him look thinner. seriously, he would've talked like a normal person to me, why can't a jw be normal? oh yeah, first rule of jws, pick the straw out of your brother's eye and show it to everyone and jump up and down and get that glassy-eyed self righteous look.
another one of the many reasons i left, i couldn't have a normal conversation with 90% of them b/c they were all on guard and paranoid since i was the 'irregular guy'. reminds me i need to read "1984" again.
sorry to hear you were stuck w/ that idiocy.
