theres been lots of posts recently concerning the american justice system.
to be fair, most of us europeans dont really understand it very well, and we have been giving you yanks a bit of a hard time lately, so i think that it would be great if we could all have some enlightenment on how it works.. for example, in the uk there is one law that applies to every citizen no matter who they are.
in the us, different states seem have different laws.
Englishman,
Just a couple of more things here I hope are correct:
(1) If you cross a state line after commiting a crime it becomes a federal matter.
(2) Judges cannot overturn an innocent verdict by a Jury just a guilty one, and that almost never happens.
(3) When state and federal law are contradictory; the federal law takes preceidences (sp?). An example of that is the medicinal weed law in California.
Jelly
i read alot of posts and it seems that though you all (or most) have left the kh, you still believe in a "father" or a "jesus" that created everything.
since i too and one that left the kh, i have delved into science and have come the conculsion that god does not exist in a spirit form, but is life itself.
the "creator" of all things is evolution.
Jason,
I personally believe that evolution is a fact, and I also believe in some form of creator. Have you ever thought that maybe the two ideas are not mutally exclusive? For myself the mechanics of creation is evolution; the entity that started the whole process moving is god.
I would however be interested in reading you 'proof' about creationism and if you desire you can answer me here or email me at [email protected].
Thank you, Jelly
is it because we're a cynical lot?.
maybe because we were the first generation of latch-key kids who learned how to raise ourselves?.
what is it that makes it so 'hard to lie to a gen xer?
Farkel,
I agree with you they will never be totally eliminated. However I do think their membership is going to be made up of a greater percentage of individuals living on the margins of society.
Currently in every Kingdom hall there are some 'normal' people, but fewer and fewer 'normal' people are going to be swayed due to the availability of information on the society. So my prediction is that in 20 years Kingdom Halls are going to be a collection of the mentally ill, predators, and the ingnorant.
Jelly
there will always be enough idiots around to keep the christian swat teams running :) .
yakki da.
kent.
The really sad thing is that most of us here, at one time in our life, looked as foolish as those people do in Kent's pics.
Jelly (Dont know what in the Hell I was thinking class)
thought you all would enjoy this.. i went to a b'day party for a friend who is a bible-thumper in the worst way!
(10x worse than most jw).. i'm sitting around like a zombie while everyone is talking about how "blessed" they are to "know christ" blah blah blah blah blah.. then my interest got peaked as one of the women started quoting scripture talking about how the reason her life is blessed is that her great great grandmother was a russian mennonite blah blah blah and the bible says that god will bless your offspring if you come to know him.
blah blah blah.. so i start asking a few well placed questions like "well what does that mean for the poor muslim sop whose great great grandmother was a muslim?
LDH,
straight off of a Chick Tract.
The first time someone told me they had a 'chick tract' for me I got very excited, boy was I disappointed when I found out what they really were.
Jelly
didn't know where to post this, but i thought it might be fun.
it was in ann landers or some such place years ago.. if you had your life to live over, say from age 16 or 18 onward, what 5 things would you do differently?.
my choices might be:.
[1] Not ended a good relationship to become a JW
[2] Stayed at home with parents and let them pay for the university
[3] more sex, alot more sex, and the naughty kind too.
Short list but I was not a JW that long.
Jelly
reading through some of the posts re the mcveigh debate, it's obvious that there is a huge divide between the usa and europe over many issues, in particular with reference to the way that society should deal with deviants.. i think that there is a lot of other cultural differences between our societies, and i'm just wondering if this is why the wtbts has had a far higher "conversion factor" in the usa than in europe.. some of the phraseology contained in the watchtower magazines is incomprehensible to europeans.
i remember that words that are in common usage now, were, when first used in the wt, totally baffling.. the expression "no way" wasn't in common use until years after the wt featured it, like wise with "points up", also "right on" meant nothing to anyone.
indeed, many return visits to placed magazine householders resulted in them asking a bewildered dub for an explanation of these then strange terms.
Englishman,
You could drive around Europe for weeks on end and never see an American car
Are you sure, some toyotas and hondas are made in America and on occasion hondas are exported overseas when the exchange rate between the dollar and yen are favorable (sometimes with the fluxuation of the yen hondas were made more cheaply here than in Japan). Also Some fords are made in Mexico with parts that are made from all over the Globe. With Globalization it is getting difficult to tell exactly what was made where.
At the wafer fab I work we design and build computer chips but we only do about 80% of the process here in America to finish (cut and cast) they are sent to Asia. Our chips are then sent to Asia,Europe and back to America to make products that are then shipped to everyplace on the planet.
Jelly
Jelly
i happened to be in my doctors office yesterday and was browsing the magazine rack looking for something to kill time, and what did i perchance find?
yes, you guessed it.
a pristine issue of awake!
Copernicus,
but I’m just burned out on convoluted religious meanderings.
I could not agree more!! I told my mom three months ago that I have a 30 minute limit on God stuff every week, which means the maximum time I will spend talking about god, going to church, etc can only total 30 minutes in a given week. Over those 3 months my god stuff limit is stabilized at about 10 minutes a week.
Jelly (must have been all those spiritual force feedings from the tower)
i happened to be in my doctors office yesterday and was browsing the magazine rack looking for something to kill time, and what did i perchance find?
yes, you guessed it.
a pristine issue of awake!
Copernicus,
I am not completely sure what Aguest is trying to say but I think his point is this:
Jesus himself felt religious systems were inherently evil so you should not be surprised that they exhibit some of the control techniques that you read about in the book by Eric Hoffer.
Jelly
yeah 200 yrs sounds a tad excessive..................but things are bigger and better in the us.....i guess it works for sentences as well.. sacramento, calif. (ap) -- a man who used tiger woods' identity to steal $17,000 worth of goods was sentenced to 200 years-to-life in prison.
anthony lemar taylor was convicted of falsely obtaining a driver's license using the name eldrick t. woods, woods' social security number and his birth date.
though he looks nothing like golf's best player, the 30-year-old taylor then used the false identification and credit cards to buy a 70-inch tv, stereos and a used luxury car between august 1998 and august 1999. .
Roamingfeline,
Thanks for your reply. I feel that prisons should exist to both rehabilitate criminals and to protect society from criminals, as of this moment they are not doing either very well. I do think long sentences are in order for violent crimes and not a mere hand-slap; drugs are a separate issue however. I think the drug problem could best be handled with treatment for the user. I would be interested to read what you think the solutions to the drug/prison problem in America are, rest assured I don’t believe that I have all the answers so I am sincere with my request; your ideas my be more sound than mine.
Jelly
