i've seen claims over the years that wt is in the real estate, book publishing business and is a for profit enterprise at it's core.. can those of you that believe this to be the case tell me who benefits from all this wealth?.
the governing body lives in relatively humble conditions no?.
i've been curious about this for a while.
darkpilver
Yes they did rent out some of the apartments to non JW's. When we were there we lived in what is called an out building meaning it was not connected to the tunnel system. In our building we had about 1/4 who were not JW's. Granted it was a small building but still and there were many out buildings in the Heights that they owned.
LITS
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/secrets-of-the-watchtower/?utm_source=reveal&utm_medium=dist&utm_campaign=zalkin.
not only will you hear howie tran, former-bethelite, but irwin zalkins talks about watchtower's child abuse secrets.
debbie mcdaniels talks about her child abuse and you will hear trey actually talking to the jw who molested her..
I have been sharing this audio with everyone who will listen, everyone who hears it is just appalled. Trey did such a great job.
LITS
i received a call from one of my job's on saturday who lives in settle wa, she was driving and listening to npr and the interview came on, she said she was shocked at how the jw's are dealing with the child abuse problem.
she has family who are hard core jw's and was sick that her grandchildren could be affected.. she cannot be the only one who has heard this on npr.
just wondering if there will be any fall out from it or if like everything else it will all just die down in jw land.
I received a call from one of my job's on Saturday who lives in Settle WA, she was driving and listening to NPR and the interview came on, she said she was shocked at how the JW's are dealing with the child abuse problem. She has family who are hard core JW's and was sick that her grandchildren could be affected.
She cannot be the only one who has heard this on NPR. Just wondering if there will be any fall out from it or if like everything else it will all just die down in JW land. I am hoping that this will cause something to happen. The story was so well done even this worldly lady was impressed by Trey.
LITS
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/secrets-of-the-watchtower/?utm_source=reveal&utm_medium=dist&utm_campaign=zalkin.
not only will you hear howie tran, former-bethelite, but irwin zalkins talks about watchtower's child abuse secrets.
debbie mcdaniels talks about her child abuse and you will hear trey actually talking to the jw who molested her..
Thank you so much, cannot wait to listen to this.
LITS
hi guys.. "brother" jose is quite possibly the most sinister speaker i've ever seen or heard.
and i've seen/head a lot of cults in my time.. he's over the top with his voice tone and gestures.
i see a future governing body member in the making here:.
Yeks his eyes are so creepy your so right
just thought we could have a concise thread listing the signs of a high control, or cult-like group:.
feel free to add to the list:.
the true sign of a cult-like group is:.
Under no circumstance are you to go to the police as we do not want Jehovah's name brought into it when a mentally ill brother threatened to kill us.
LITS
what happens when bethelite gets sick.
sparky you are totally right, A huge amount had to due with who you were. Like the brother who had back surgery. He came from a very prominent family and they seemed to have a lot of money, his family did. Him and his wife were used in a lot of pictures on the WT and Awake. He could be such a jerk at time. One time at breakfast I asked for seconds of yogurt, he made this HUGE scene about it asking me if I really needed seconds. His wife most of the time would not even acknowledge that I was at the table and if I tried to speak to her it felt like I was worm and she would look at me with disdain and sigh like I was so much brother to even speak to.
There was just so much crazy stuff at Bethel. So many really had money backing them. One time I was in the hopper at the 50 building and this very well dressed sister who wore designer clothes looked over at me getting used clothes and said to the brother walking besides her loudly so I would hear her that she would NEVER stoop to wear someone old stuff.
We pioneered living in a 1955 trailer that was a huge fire hazard, we put 30,000 miles a year on the car and I felt lucky to be able to go to the goodwill.
There was deferentially class distinctions at Bethel. The more money your family had the better you were treated pure and simple.
LITS
in an earlier reddit post we discussed the possible role that watchtower business associate and trump son-in-law may play in a trump white house; and if that meant that wt may have a friend with the president-elect's ear.. now, thanks to a tip from /u/jpentrak, i've been alerted to the fact that watchtower has removed the video news update: jehovah’s witnesses moving forward.
this video featured jared kushner speaking in glowing terms about wt personnel and how well maintained the buildings were by the organisation.. despite claims in this same video that "we're not trapped in time" by watchtower spokesman david a. semonian, clearly they don't know that the internet never forgets.. here is the url of the removed page:.
https://www.jw.org/en/news/releases/by-region/united-states/video-jehovahs-witnesses-sale-brooklyn-move/ .
Thanks for the link.
LITS
what happens when bethelite gets sick.
Listener
It was from my address and if I remember we were supposed to tell them also. And then there was the fact that we had to dress like we were going to a meeting. In that part of Brooklyn dressing up you stuck out like crazy. It was crazy and it really hurt my feelings that my husband would just drop me off. I was so scarred to go there alone, I remember not sleeping for days being worried about it but partly it was my fault also as I went along with it.
I look back now and just shake my head. I was a born in and believed everything even though it made me so miserable that I thought of suicide a lot while pioneering, I was so depressed it was beyond belief. I found no joy in life at all and I honestly thought that was how it was supposed to be because this was not the real life after all, right? I would have joy in the new world.
Now I know the reason I was so miserable was because of stupid people, men manly who were over me telling me what to do when to do it and how I was supposed to feel about doing it. It was crazy.
The reason I lost the tooth was because when we applied to Bethel we had to fill out an application that stated we were in good health and that our teeth were in good shape. Well they were when we went but I got this tooth ache after I was there for six months. My overseer made me feel like I was stealing from Bethel if I went to the dentist, so I just would not go, the tooth ache got so bad that my face started to swell up. By the time I went it was beyond fixing. If I had just went when it first started to hurt it would have been fine, they would have just filled it and that would have been it.
John Appletauer was the dentist in Brooklyn at the time and he was very nice and kind. He said it was crazy what my overseer had told me and he was upset but he never did anything about it. He did say that it happened way to much and that my overseer was not alone in his way of thinking. He told me that a lot of younger bethellights had teeth problems. Brother Appletauer wanted to try to save the tooth and he put a small brace on it, etc and so I had to go to the dentist a lot in a six month period as Appletauer said I was too young to loose that tooth. My overseer was so pissed and made me walk to the appointment instead of taking the shuttle as I was wasting to much of my work time at Bethel trying to save my tooth. Again there were times it was totally unsafe but I did it. Yet there was another sister on my crew who had a twin sister at Bethel and she was always taking the shuttle for stupid things and my overseer was totally fine with that. In fact this sister would sleep in the closets during the day instead of working and my overseer again was totally fine with it.
One day my overseer got really mad at me beyond furious at me telling me I was lazy and only there for the free food and health care. That I was HUGE and I should be able to work non stop without breaks, etc. When I brought up the sister sleeping in the closet he said she was petite and just could not work like I could because I was just so HUGE. I am 5.5 and weighed at the time 125. I will never forget how horrible I felt sitting there with him and it was a private communication just my overseer and me, not my husband and no other brother either.
It just totally left a mark on my soul, I have always felt fat since than and just like I do matter. That petite's sister's husband was featured on one of their latest videos of the construction at Rambo. So she is still there. I on the other hand was one of the ones asked to leave Bethel. I have had three hernia's and am going to the doctor this Friday as I am fairly sure I have another one a fourth one. The last one cost us 13,000 US dollars out of pocket to repair. My doctors have told me the kind of hernia's I have usually men only get and that very few women get and it is from lifting to much. My job at Bethel was to lift 80 to 90 pounds over my head in construction, all those videos where they show the smiling sisters waving to the camera, well they are the petite sisters who can sleep in closets not the ones who truly are doing the work.
My overseer was beyond pissed when I weighted one of the closet parts to see how much it weighed after he told me I was the most lazy person he knew. My overseer told me that my body was not mine but Bethel's because I had signed the dotted line and I had better do as I as assigned and not ask questions. It was one of the few times I went and tried to stand up for myself by weighing the closet part because I felt that in the future if I had medial problems, like did happen, if I was truly hurting myself I wanted to know why. My overseer told me men and women are of the same strength that women are just as strong as men but only put on that they are not. And I could body build also, he honestly told me that, I am not joking.
I am just so bitter and right now my body really aches from the fourth hernia which I am kind of freaking out about. I have had 3 surgery's thanks to Bethel and I do not want a 4th.
The saying no good deed goes unpunished. Or I should say I was so stupid. I look back and just wonder why did I just not walk away. Just leave. I felt so trapped, I had no one to turn to for help and it seemed everyone was backing up my overseer and then the elder's, etc.
It is just crazy.
LITS
what happens when bethelite gets sick.
When I was there I was sent to Bedford-Stuyvesant to a very run down clinic to get birth control pills. I needed them for medical reasons not for birth control but they would not give them to the sisters. The roomer was one of the GB was against the pill. I was told that at the farm and Patterson the sister's were given them.
It was beyond humiliating, as a sister. I had to call personal and ask permission from some old brother who told me that I could go only if I was dropped off and that my husband could not wait for me but had to come right back to Bethel and when I was finished I could call him to pick me up. Now this was before cell phones and it was hard to reach my husband at his job.
I had no a clue about Bedford-Stuyvesant and what it was like until I got there. It was beyond horrible in fact Billy Joel in one of his songs talks about walking through Bedford-Stuyvesant alone and surviving. It was deferentially not a place for a women to be alone. But my husband did as he was told and dropped me off and went back to work at Bethel waiting for me to call. The clinic unknown to me HATED the JW's which I did not know and canceled my appointment without calling me or if they did the powers to be a Bethel did not tell me. I begged the clinic to let me stay inside until my husband could come to pick me up but NO they hated JW's as I said. The women told me she was sick of them getting free medical care. I was forced to go outside where a group of young guys purposely bumped into me as I was crossing the street to go the a Berger King to wait for my husband. One of them spoke up and said let's mug her. The other one said to leave me alone.
The inside of the Berger King had bullet proof glass three layers thick. It was one of the most scariest times in my life.
It was so crazy we just could not afford to buy the pills ourselves which Bethel knew. To allow a sister to go through that is crazy. Some of the other sisters who went their husband refused to just drop them off and told Bethel that they were waiting with their wives no matter what and they could just kick them out if they had a problem with it. Bethel backed down and I went with this couple, who's husband stayed with us. He would take about 4 of us married sister along with his wife. Also the clinic was dirty and I really worried that I might get something but it was the only option I and the other sister'shad.
Also I lost a tooth while there because I was afraid to go to the dentist and by the time I did it was beyond fixing.
LITS
