hillary_step

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Posts by hillary_step

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  1

  Are Ocular Afflictions Genetically Transferable?

  by hillary_step in

  1. forum
  2. tech-support

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  have you seen this mans son?

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  hillary_step

  Have you seen this mans son?
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  Ve Vil Choose Who Takes Ze Emblems

  by Englishman in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  this is a spin-off to scully's stunning account of mistreatment at the hands of jw elders.. scully was refused the emblems at a memorial celebration.

  this happened once to me also, just after my father had died.

  stupidly, my wife and i agreed to accompany my mother to a memorial.

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  hillary_step

  At a memorial that I attended in Croydon one year, the autistic teenage son of a JW family waited with panting and focused attention for the plate with the bread to arrive. When it did he sprang forward, snatched it out of the servers hands and ran out of the front door of the KH.

  Four hefty Brothers broke ranks and fled in pursuit of the villain who just seemed to disappear into thin air.

  He was eventually discovered crouching behind a car , grinning wildly. The plate was empty. It was surmised that he ate the unleavened bread mistaking it for one of those bland supermarket cookies.

  HS
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  30

  elders, culpability, apples & oranges...

  by dungbeetle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  sometimes it's funny when a thread gets off topic----and sometimes it isn't.. a very good question has arisen.."are jehovah's witness elders culpable for damage done by the watchtower by virtue of their postition?".

  somehow the topic changed to "don't blame elders for being 'in' the org, they may be mislead, that's all they know, they do some good, yada yada yada.... like hell!!!!!.

  thee is a big world of difference between being 'in' the org for whatever reason, and being an elder, a public representative, an active campaigner, a judicial committee member...and i can go on and on here....of an organization that teaches death and destruction of most everyone on earth, and whose policies result in deaths of people probably every day.. if a person must stay in, then stay in.

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  hillary_step

  Frenchy,

  Our posts crossed - please excuse my repetition of your points.

  HS
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  30

  elders, culpability, apples & oranges...

  by dungbeetle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  sometimes it's funny when a thread gets off topic----and sometimes it isn't.. a very good question has arisen.."are jehovah's witness elders culpable for damage done by the watchtower by virtue of their postition?".

  somehow the topic changed to "don't blame elders for being 'in' the org, they may be mislead, that's all they know, they do some good, yada yada yada.... like hell!!!!!.

  thee is a big world of difference between being 'in' the org for whatever reason, and being an elder, a public representative, an active campaigner, a judicial committee member...and i can go on and on here....of an organization that teaches death and destruction of most everyone on earth, and whose policies result in deaths of people probably every day.. if a person must stay in, then stay in.

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  hillary_step

  Elders are the 'soft targets' that the WTS sets up to focus its failures away from itself and into a more tangible form that the publishers can then direct their ire to.

  Elders are allowed very, very little personal input into overseeing their congregations, less so today than at any time in the history of the WTS. They are dictated to by the WTS over almost every decision required of them, and this is no exaggeration.

  When things go right, the WTS takes the credit, when things go wrong the WTS blames its elders. It is actually a very cunning system which has many JW's attacking their elders for putting into practice edicts dictated to them by Brooklyn. If they refuse to follow direction they are removed and become outcasts drifting in a very strange sea.

  A perfect example of this was the comment made by Brown when discussing the failures of the WTS toward child abuse with the press. The WTS took no blame at all, but placed the mantle of blame firmly of 'some elders who screw up'.

  When Ray Franz encouraged the GB to return to the 'elder' arrangement in the congregations in 1972, previously abandoned in the 40's, I am quite sure he did not realize the monster he was giving life to.

  Best regards -- HS
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  30

  elders, culpability, apples & oranges...

  by dungbeetle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  sometimes it's funny when a thread gets off topic----and sometimes it isn't.. a very good question has arisen.."are jehovah's witness elders culpable for damage done by the watchtower by virtue of their postition?".

  somehow the topic changed to "don't blame elders for being 'in' the org, they may be mislead, that's all they know, they do some good, yada yada yada.... like hell!!!!!.

  thee is a big world of difference between being 'in' the org for whatever reason, and being an elder, a public representative, an active campaigner, a judicial committee member...and i can go on and on here....of an organization that teaches death and destruction of most everyone on earth, and whose policies result in deaths of people probably every day.. if a person must stay in, then stay in.

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  hillary_step

  Hi Bigboi,

  Like it or not Elders are accountable.

  Given the validity of this argument, who would they be accountable to? What reparations would you expect those who are ‘culpable’ to make?

  Every active JW evangelized, often using deceitful skills learned from others with a zealous relish. With these skills we grafted our message into the mind and hearts of our hapless victims. Again given the validity of your argument this means that every publisher, elder, CO, DO to some degree or the other is culpable.

  How would we measure the degree of culpability? By the number of people we infected with our message, the number of JC’s we sat on? The amount of pain we caused? I have known elders who are so brutal I am convinced they would be criminals outside of the WTS. I have also met many gentle, kind and sincere elders who actively worked to ease pain and not cause it. I note the same findings with publishers, CO’s, DO’s, Missionaries, even GB members.

  Someone earlier on this thread noted that elders were culpable, not the system, because they are individuals. In this case, should not their judgment be made as individuals?

  The issues are not as simple as our emotions might like them to be. I cannot see how a person can ever free themselves of the threads of WTS thinking until we accept that there are as many good and bad people within the WTS as within any other religious system. Punishing the people, by deed or word does not unravel the system, but imho misses the real target.

  The parallel with Nazism was made earlier but it has to be acknowledged that at Nuremberg only the leaders and those who were directly responsible for murder were tried. The rank and file Nazi, or soldier were not. This amounted to several thousand people out of several millions..

  The line needs to be drawn in the correct place lest we punish the misled instead of the malevolent. Several dozen people are responsible for pulling the strings that work the WT puppet and the system hangs precariously on these life-lines.

  How to snip their strings is another problem altogether.

  Best regards -- HS
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  14

  Merry X-Mas!!

  by Kent in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  hi folks!.

  merry x-mas everyone!.

  i m still in the canary-islands, but jumped into a cyber-cafe, and wanted to wish you all a merry x-mas.

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  hillary_step

  Kent,

  Hope that you are enjoying your vacation.

  If you manage to get your tooth in and want a wonderful bistro style resteraunt take a trip into Las Palmas and ask someone to direct you to the 'Kangaroo'! Nothing fancy in the way of cuisine ( very local ) but great atmosphere in the evenings when the Canarians appear with guitars.

  By the way sorry about the failing molars, as Paul Newman would say, 'Getting old 'aint for sissies'!

  Yucky Ducky -- HS
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  150

  Raymond Franz and UN

  by kpax in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  can anyone ask raymond franz what he knows about the un involvement?.

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  kpax

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  hillary_step

  MadApostate,

  But at least I'm looking down, not up!

  In which case be very careful of light poles, a sharp bang on the head might......on the other hand...

  HS
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  150

  Raymond Franz and UN

  by kpax in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  can anyone ask raymond franz what he knows about the un involvement?.

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  kpax

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  hillary_step

  MadA,

  RFWorshippers will even humble themselves to glorifying a post of someone they dislike if it may possibly be a positive for their "god".

  This statement is very clear evidence that you are lacking in all the skills neccessary to be able to present a reasoned argument on this issue.

  The disengenous way that you attempt to divert attention away from the more useful arguments of this thread by spray-painting everyone who opposes your view with the same color, does nothing but make you look rather foolish.

  I agree with you that my argument is 're-hashed', in the sense that it is a repetition of arguments on this thread that many have patiently made for you in an attempt to see the 'penny drop'. We have failed.

  As Zimmerman once said, 'The half-learned is more dangerous than the simpleton'.

  HS
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  150

  Raymond Franz and UN

  by kpax in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  can anyone ask raymond franz what he knows about the un involvement?.

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  kpax

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  hillary_step

  MadA,

  I doubt that there is any xjw who is unappreciative of what RF has done thus far, but it is ridiculous to allow such appreciation to rise to a level of worship that would accept and justify the possibility that RF may die without disclosing all he knows about the WTS.

  Whilst your ire is understood, your reasoning is not.

  Where you see 'worship' others see a victim of the same mental conditioning that engulfed you as a JW and then move understand that issue. All of us will die at some stage never having declared all we know about many other equally important experiences in our lives.

  My father for example was a sniper in WWII. He would not discuss one moment of his experiences with me and I only found out the horrors he endured and perpetuated from other members of his unit. Were he alive would you have him research the names of his victims, trace the members of the surviving families, make reparations to them for what he did to their fathers? Some dogs MadA, are best left sleeping in peace as once awake they can bite the wrong person in the wrong place.

  As I have said before Ray Franz has on more than one occasion apologized publicly for the part he played in helping to develop the ideals of the WTS, ideals he now accepts harmed others.

  He painstakingly researched and wrote two books that have provided thousands of persons with enough information to ensure that they completely understand the WTS and its modus operandi. He obviously thought long and hard about what he would included and what he would not and did this for good reason, least of all being the legal vagaries placed on all printed literature. He obviously only included what could be proved in the final event.

  His wrtings have liberated many, not just from the chains of WTS thinking but from imprisonment to other ‘Organizations’. He was fortunate enough to be an accomplished writer, and had he not written these books all we would have had is third party statements of his experiences which would certainly not have the same affect on the reader.

  Worship? Nonsense. Making excuses for the man? More nonsense. While a JW I met RF on a number of occasions as an acting member of the GB, my feelings toward him now are not very different. He is a decent enough fellow who spent too long trying to make sense of the senseless, but of course he has his failings. We have close friends in common, many of whom are still ‘inside’ and still sympathetic to his cause and in this way he left a ticking bomb behind him, but it seems to me MadA, that by your demands that he ‘do more’, you are the one that is elevating him beyond the human.

  As far as most of us are concerned he has paid his debt in full, that some may feel that he did not pay enough interest on his loan is not particularly helpful.

  Teejay, has encapsulated all the components of this issue very clearly and in a reasoned manner. Read his posts again - you will learn much from them.

  Best regards -- HS
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  4

  Small Souls, Enormous Grief

  by Esmeralda in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i wish to god that i could give amanda higley and her family what they truly want most for christmas.. amanda nicole higley is just four years old.

  "so i can fix daddy's building.".

  "i'll fix daddy's building.

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  hillary_step

  Esmeralda,

  Thank you. Its heart's like yours that makes life worth its struggles.

  HS