this is a preliminary summary only.
i hope to obtain more details later.. .
all five cases are still within the criminal justice system.
Of course there will be a transcript. The June 8 meeting had a transcript, and so do depositions, so why wouldn't these hearings?
What took place on June 8 was a publlic hearing by the Victorian government's inquiry into protecting vunerable children. It had nothing to do with the magistrates court. No one in the magistrates court in Morwell will have been recording the conversations for a transcript.
i recently had a falling-out with a jw which i won't go into because it is nonsense really.
in one of the pathetic retorts i was told i was "negative".
this wasn't the first time i heard this from a jw over the years.. what i have noticed is that it is because i spoke about real life situations in the world and/or problems and wrong things in the religion.
The Watchtower has always warned against the "dangers" of negative speech, so naturally the drones will go to extreme measures to comply. Essentially it's just another control tactic to ensure people are made to feel BAAAD if they ever criticise the authority structure or one of the WTS's methods. Because ultimately it's not the idiots running the show you're criticising, you're actually finding fault with God!
Years ago, after the Revelation Climax book came out, I was having a discussion with an elder who was a bloody moaner himself, always complaining in coded language about the way the other elders treated him. I mentioned some minor criticism about the Revelation book and he suddenly leapt down my throat and said I was being critical.
After a while you just don't bother raising any criticism -- whether it's the boring, repetitive meetings and assemblies or the pointlessness of spending hours in the field service for no constructive purpose. There'll always be someone who starts sooking and accuses you of being negative and then word will get around that you're a "murmurer" and "complainer".
this is a preliminary summary only.
i hope to obtain more details later.. .
all five cases are still within the criminal justice system.
The material above is not a transcript. It is the observations of someone in the court for the purposes of Unthank's website.
i'm not sure if this is a controversial subject or not, i suspect it is, the 1936-1945 nazi regime were the most evil b*****d's in the world and thankfully were destroyed, however the jehovah's witnesses having sufffered under their rule, then became even more evil not by destroying the person's physical life, but destroying their way to god, if a person leaves then they become dead to god, and this from a second rate publishing company!
please don't think i'm being flippant about all the suffering and death the nazi's caused, but as we are most of us spiritual people, surely the witnesses caused a catastrophy in the post 1945 era.. best regards,.
star tiger .
The Watch Tower leadership certainly acts in a manner that resembles totalitarian states, in which information is controlled and members are stirred into activity to pursue a common goal achieved through unity of thinking. They clearly identify their enemies and encourage members to hate them. They also require unquestioning obedience.
It's an ideology, a belief generated by the cultish conviction that they alone are God's "organisation" and are acting on God's instructions.
Hitler had a worldview as well, but it was driven by a maniacal belief that Jews were the cause of the world's evils. He saw them as inhuman beasts and had no conscience about exterminating them en masse. There's the difference.
I'm reading a chilling book at the moment, Saul Friedlander's Nazi Germany and the Jews, which includes accounts of the cold and dispasionate mass murder of tens of thousands of Jews at a time in 1941: men and women alike were ordered to strip naked, lie face-down in a pit or on top of dead or dying Jews before they were shot with a single bullet to the head from a distance of two metres. The soldiers worked in long shifts to carry out their work.
As much as I hate the WTS, I would never suggest that they would do the same. There's a limit to Star Tiger's analogy, but there are certainly some common elements.
this is a preliminary summary only.
i hope to obtain more details later.. .
all five cases are still within the criminal justice system.
I doubt there would be a transcript. It wasn't a trial, it was a mentions hearing, which is purely administrative process, setting dates for the next hearing and working out where it fits in the legal system.
It's quite possible someone from the WTS side made a reference to the FDS being a theological arrangement -- they are happy to use the words "theolological" and "denomination" when they're forced to in a legal setting but avoid using them in their literature because it demeans their sense of divine appointment.
However I don't for a moment think that they would have referred to it as an imaginary friend. The rest of the quote referring to "a well placed mind placement" etc is clearly the thinking of someone who is an opponent of the WTS, possibly lifted from a web forum.
this talk of vin toole's involvement in the steven unthank case in victoria reminded me of a legal case back in 1999 that went all the way to the high court of australia.. in february 1998 a 20-year-old sister named sherin qumsieh gave birth in a melbourne hospital.
complications developed, she required an emergency hysterectomy and began suffering severe blood loss.
she had signed a blood card, but the hospital warned her husband, nidal, that there was a high likelihood she'd die if she didn't have a transfusion.
wha happened: At the Supreme Court challenge he (or the WTS) presented expert medical advice that his wife's condition wasn't as bad as he'd been told and also that evidence had been withheld from the Guardianship Board that showed that his wife had signed the No Blood card. Notwithstanding the fact that it as he who had approached the lawyers in the first place, he put it to the court that he had been intimidated and pressured by the hosoital into doing what he did.
As opposed to other patients who are pressured by the WTS Hospital Liaison Committees to refuse blood.
The Supreme Couirt, as I mentioned, decided the Guardianship Board hadn't erred, but had simply made the best decision based on the evidence it had before it in what it believed was a llife-threatening situation.
I remain intrigued by what they think now: Do they still regret taking that action to save her life? Are they still Witnesses?
i was just flipping through the channels to find something for the woman i care for to watch, and i came across a movie tonight on the sundance channel called, "worlds apart".
it is about a jehovah's witness teen who falls in love with someone who is not.. although i can't watch it now, i am taping it.
i couldn't look to see if it is a documentary of sorts, but i bet it will be interesting to say the least.. it's on at 7 pm tonight, eastern.
The concept and storyline is good and accurate, though I was puzzled at the beards and open shirts and a convention at which everyone sat on the grass. Artistic licence perhaps.
this talk of vin toole's involvement in the steven unthank case in victoria reminded me of a legal case back in 1999 that went all the way to the high court of australia.. in february 1998 a 20-year-old sister named sherin qumsieh gave birth in a melbourne hospital.
complications developed, she required an emergency hysterectomy and began suffering severe blood loss.
she had signed a blood card, but the hospital warned her husband, nidal, that there was a high likelihood she'd die if she didn't have a transfusion.
This talk of Vin Toole's involvement in the Steven Unthank case in Victoria reminded me of a legal case back in 1999 that went all the way to the High Court of Australia.
In February 1998 a 20-year-old sister named Sherin Qumsieh gave birth in a Melbourne hospital. Complications developed, she required an emergency hysterectomy and began suffering severe blood loss. She had signed a blood card, but the hospital warned her husband, Nidal, that there was a high likelihood she'd die if she didn't have a transfusion. He approached a Melbourne firm of ambulance chasers, Slater and Gordon, and asked them what he could do. They went to the Victorian Guardianship Board and applied to make Nidal, the husband, her guardian since she was now unconscious.
The Guardianship Board, in an emergency sitting, accepted the application and Nidal, as her guardian, requested the hospital give her a transfusion. She was given blood, recovered and was discharged from hospital a week later. The story made front-page headlines in the Melbourne papers and was all over radio and TV because it was a perfect dilemma: a woman who had asked NOT to be given blood had been overruled by her husband and a court in a decision that had apparently saved her life. What would she say when she woke up?
The couple retreated into silence and I have no idea what the fallout was. Would the husband have gotten into trouble with his congregation? Had he brought the org into disrepute? (Are they still Witnesses?)
Within a short time the Qumsiehs had lodged a case with the Supreme Court of Victoria to have it rule that the Guardianship Board's decision had been illegal. It wouldn't have done the family any good, but it would make it clearer for JWs in future similar cases. Maybe it would get Nidal off the hook in a judicial committee hearing. The Supreme Court rejected the application, deciding that the Guardianship Board had to make a decision based on the information it had on the night and had done the best it could.
In September 1998 the Qumsiehs appealed that Supreme Court decision in the Court of Appeal of Victoria. In a 3-0 decision the Court of Appeal dismissed the application. In October 1999 they appealed that decision to the High Court and lost again and this time were ordered to pay costs to the hospital.
At the Supreme Court the couple were represented by Vin Toole and a JW lawyer called WP Cathcart, who shows up on Google searches defending Witnesses all over the world. At the High Court they were represented by a female Queens Counsel called Crennan, possibly Susan Crennan. So a few questions are in order:
The documents for the Qumsieh case are at the Austlii website: search for the name Qumsieh and just for fun, search for Toole's name and you can see a few other cases good ol' Vin has run on behalf of the Witnesses.
I swear that dude is leadership material. All he needs to do is start nibbling the wafers and he'll be on the reserves list when the next GB member falls off the perch.
they were married for some 51 years.
you cannot stand up against them in battle.
you cannot stand up against him in battle.
Sounds like a "best of" collection of the final talks from a District Convention. Why didn't they talk about the real issues affecting the society:
once people have come in, and the doorman and the mic men are in place, why are there a few other suits scattered about at the back?
i saw a guy get up, sit down, get up, sit down, get up and when i looked what he was up to he was reading the noticeboard and looking around, waiting for a bus.
i figured he wasn't doing much at that point, but anything to not stay seated.
I used to go up the back and read the noticeboard, even go out the back to the library and flick through the old volumes. Anything to alleviate the boredom. It was while scanning the schedule of WT readers during a meeting that I realised I had been dropped from the list as a punishment for something I'd done. I went and asked an elder what was going on and he said, "Oh, Brother X was supposed to discuss that with you. Did he not?"
I wonder now what would have happened if the whole congregation, one by one, had gotten up and wandered around the back of the hall with their hands in their pockets, whispering to each other and passing notes.
