Posts by LightCloud

51

Analysis: What they saw during the Gates arrest

by Yizuman in

by jesse washington (ap) 3 hours ago.

henry louis gates jr. felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he looked across the threshold of his home at sgt.

james crowley.

LightCloud

Absolutely there are great cops. One of the best I knew was actually a JW that was wrestling with his career the whole time. I was struck by how this guy, doing such an honorable job has to constantly question himself in the congregation.

And yes even MP's can be alright sometime. I have to admit policing a predominantly 18-24 year old male population that is used to hard living and hard partying has to be one of the toughest jobs in the world. I would dread almost every call I got becuase at least one individual involved was very well trained in the use of weapons, more than likely had direct experience with using said weapons, and more than likely an aggresive alpha male type personality.

To deal with that on a constant basis has to give a bit of a complex.

93

How many here actually still believe that there is a God??

by annalice in

jw
friends

after being gone from the jw's for many years now , and having done extensive research on the history of god and the belief in him , i can't seem to find any logical way to have a belief in an invisble being up there ruling over us.

how many here still believe?

how many don't?.

LightCloud

I do believe. But I got this gut feeling he, she or it is nothing like what any of the current organized religions portray.

13

Literature found in dumpster - does it not warm your heart?

by kurtbethel in

from jw proclaimers yahoo group.

the man should be ashamed for sending it to a landfill.

a responsible person would recycle all those dead trees.. ------------------------------------------.

LightCloud

Torn up WT's, Awakes, and the other publications like the smaller books make great brush and kindling to start fires.

True story.

20

Meandering Thoughts of my Old Life - Regrets

by AllTimeJeff in

jw
friends

two threads popped up today, one on pedophiles and jw's, and another on what keeps us/me coming back here..... i gotta tell you, when i remember that i was once an elder, spouting off the company line, it makes me sick.

when i had to read the defense of jw pedophiles today, i was reminded that i too once spouted a similar line.

i personally observed other elders resign for what i knew to be real differences they had with the gb on how to handle pedophiles.

LightCloud

I was alot like you Blue. I thought it was important to talk the talk and walk the walk. My only regret in that was that I was able to put so much pressure on some of the other JW's at my school that in a few cases I got some of these kids to sacrifice normal life expriences to come back into agreement with the Truth. I had one JW girl even told me that I inspired her to embrace the truth more as she saw that it was possible to live just as the WT had told us to be. Prior to that she saw pretty much the blanket double life most JW kids lived and thought that was the norm.

I gave up so much normal stuff in the cause of living according to the WTS. I once starved myself for 3 days as a self punishment for cussing. I cut off my first "girlfriend" as she was worldly. I dropped off the highschool baseball team. I stopped being involved in the political debate team. I gave up my dream of joining the Army as a helicopter pilot. I didn't pursue my offer of a scholarship to OSU.

My biggest regret though has to be the Bible studies I brought into the "truth". I had a hand in them giving up all the normal and healthy things people should pursue. I just hope upon looking back that they recovered as I have. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, now looking back though I can see just how wrong it was.

66

Anyone have a soft spot for old video games?

by John Doe in

jw
friends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bco8bepgzi0.

LightCloud

Missile Command wasted away many a cold winter day when my dad bought us our first Atari. The game I remember most though was an old PC game called Ultima 4. It was somewhat naughty under strict JW's rule, with the magic stuff, demons and evil spirits but I had my mom sold on it as I talked up the whole, you have to be good and make good choices to ulimately win the game. Things like stealing and what not actually got you put in jail in the game. I think she knew it would not fly to the Elders but she was only studying at that point so I got away with it.

51

Analysis: What they saw during the Gates arrest

by Yizuman in

by jesse washington (ap) 3 hours ago.

henry louis gates jr. felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he looked across the threshold of his home at sgt.

james crowley.

LightCloud

I have had my run-ins with power mad cops. There is worse, ie power-mad MP's or cops in small towns that have full knowledge that you are more likely military becuase of the post stickers in our window. Civilian cops have soldiers over the barrel big time and they often exploit us for money or just to get kicks off of messing with us. Its best to comply and 99% of the time if you are innocent nothing happens but a big inconvience a little humiliation and at times a big irritation and test of patience. To me it is just one of those things. I try to counsel some of my guys to just comply and pretty much solves or at least alleviates alot of the problems. But I will always get a guy to the unit that has the racial chip on the shoulder, or the over privileged entitlement atitude and it leads to me doing lots of paperwork and dealing out some corrective training until they get it.

51

Analysis: What they saw during the Gates arrest

by Yizuman in

by jesse washington (ap) 3 hours ago.

henry louis gates jr. felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he looked across the threshold of his home at sgt.

james crowley.

LightCloud

Your missing the point.

Profiling and stopping people of certain races in areas of predominantly another race goes both directions.

I guess I should have just shut up and taken it. Oops wait I did.

51

Analysis: What they saw during the Gates arrest

by Yizuman in

by jesse washington (ap) 3 hours ago.

henry louis gates jr. felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he looked across the threshold of his home at sgt.

james crowley.

LightCloud

I got pulled over plenty of times as a youth. They often stopped me with some bogus thing like one of your tail lights is out, one of the lights over my license plate was out, or I was going 4 MPH over the speed limit. Every time there was quite a bit of haggling, questioning and prompting as though they were fishing. A couple times they even came straight out and asked me what I was doing in the neighborhood, seeing as how the most likely reason I was there was looking for drugs or trying to pick up prostitutes. In their minds there was a high likelyhood I was up to no good. I never got out of any ticket. I volunteered each time to allow them to look over my vehicle.

My crime. Being a young WHITE man in a poor predominatly black neighborhood.

I hear this all the time about blacks fearing the cops as they get stopped all the time for no good reason other than racially based profiling. Well it happened to me all the time to. But guess what I get a smart mouth with a cop, say anything other than yes sir, no sir and my butt goes to jail and the charges don't get dropped. Where is my outlet to complain and offer the cops an opprotunity to learn from their mistakes?

14

The feel good, Jim Beam

by John Doe in

jw
friends

, jack daniels, jose quervo fluffy thread.

.

LightCloud

Beam is good stuff, but from my friends they say I get all sad and dramatic. I used it as a self-medication for quite some time. But I have since sworn off of it. After a long day though I do feel the temptation to buy a bottle and fill a tumbler with about 4 cubes of ice, and fill it about half way go out back to the hammock, read a book and fall asleep.

381

Were you or someone you know sexually molested by a Jehovah's Witness ?

by flipper in

due to the fact there are about 27,000 members of this religion that are known pedophiles, and the information about it is kept in a secret database file, i wonder how many lurking jw's as well as others are aware of the severity of this problem?

remember, it's 27,000 pedophiles that they know about.

what about the thousands that don't get caught?

LightCloud

I was dating a girl at the Kingdom Hall who after a couple months claimed that she was being molested by her adoptive father. He was an Elder at the time. She told the Elders in my congregation, her congregation and was threatening to bring it to the cops. I remember being dragged in for questioning. I think part of his defence was that I was putting her up to lying becuase he opposed us dating. With the way the questioning was going I could see that is what most of them wanted to believe. The reality of it was she actually pursued me from the beginning as I was mostly wanting to do the whole Pioneer thing and was not really in the frame of mind of dating or getting married. She persisted though and wanted to go to the cops about it. The Elders did remove him from being an Elder but basically swept the rest of it under the carpet. I was young and didn't know what to think. I had never dated a girl. Only been a Witness for a few years. I was doing my best to be a good Witness. And was suddenly drug into the middle of this huge mess, my own reputation took a slam and did not know what to think of it all. I recall shortly after breaking the relationship off that she attempted to kill herself. I remember not fully knowing what to believe of her charges. Some of it seemed a desperate attempt to break free of the Witnesses and her Witness family. But even beyond the off nature of being a JW Elder there did seem to be something wrong with the guy so looking back maybe what she said was true.

The thing I remember most was how callously the Elders dealt with it all. They were cold and callous about it all, there sole aim being to mitigate damage to the Organization not addressing some fairly obvious mental/spiritual problems in a family they were supposed to be caring for. Not spiritual healing, justice or the health and welfare of the congregation, it all seemed to be about damage control and making the problem go away as quietly as possible.