Is it possible to link to a thread here about the WT video you're referring to? Love the Daily Show, but feel like I missed the joke!
Chaserious
JoinedPosts by Chaserious
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Daily Show References WT Masturbation Video
by MrFreeze indon't remember it being brought up here and something made me think of it so i thought i'd post it here.. here's the link from the segment.
it shows up at around the 5:45 mark of the clip: .
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-31-2012/a-daily-show-tribute-to-institutional-competence.
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RBC biggie divulges WTS expects disaster victims helped by RBC volunteers to fork over insurance money to the WTS
by oppostate inmy wife spent all morning long preparing this super thanksgiving banquet.
with a huge turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce.
and greenbeen salad, pie and icecream.. yummy!.
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Chaserious
"Putting the pieces together, from the insurance companies' point of view (including the National Flood Insurance Program, i.e.taxpayers) they are paying to restore property that was not covered by an insurance policy, for which premiums have not been paid. I'll leave it to the lawyers to opine whether or not this is legal, but it certainly is unethical!"
You do have to pay premium for a NFIP policy... usually quite a sizeable premium, in fact.
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RBC biggie divulges WTS expects disaster victims helped by RBC volunteers to fork over insurance money to the WTS
by oppostate inmy wife spent all morning long preparing this super thanksgiving banquet.
with a huge turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce.
and greenbeen salad, pie and icecream.. yummy!.
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Chaserious
It's not insurance fraud. As long as you pay insurance premiums, you are entitled to get the fair commercial cost of repairs and do whatever you want with it. You could take a cruise around the world with the money if you want. If you have a mortgage, your mortgage company might have to sign off on the check if it's over a certain amount, depending on what state you are in. But they don't care where the money goes as long as the work gets done. I'm sure the way the RBC phrases it, they don't demand the money, but just highly pressure you to hand it over. I worked on the RBC for a few years and wasn't aware of this. They probably have the RBC bigshots talk to the homeowners, and I doubt they put anything on paper. It's sleazy, especially with the PR spin they put on it for the literature, but it's still a voluntary donation. To be honest, it's not a bad deal for the homeowners, because if you paid a contractor the money to get the work done, you'd be right back where you started. If you make the donation to the WTS, you're back to where you started, plus you can deduct it from your taxes. On a $50k repair job, that could easily translate into a $15k tax refund, plus getting your house fixed.
DaCheech: You are close, but I worked for a homeowers insurance company in the past. Once you satisfy them that the repairs are done/are getting done, they have to sign the check over to the homeowner. In most states, it's illegal for them to force you to forward the money to an approved contractor or require that a contractor be on the check.
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Jehovah's Witnesses Watchtower SUICIDE . How many JW suicides can you recall?
by Anti-Cult inhow many jw suicides can you recall?.
is it more common than the rest of society?.
i personally know of 5.
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Chaserious
I was in from birth until I was about 26, and I can only think of two cases. One was a young brother with small kids who decided to become a police officer and was constantly getting crap about it from the elders. They tried to counsel him not to do it, but apparrently he really wanted to be an officer, and they couldnt' DF him for it even though it's discouraged, so he just did it. They kept playing games with him, like taking away his "privileges" one at a time - not letting him carry the microphones, not letting him even give #2 talks, and so on. I think there were other factors as well in his suicide, but I felt bad about the hassle and embarrassment they were constantly putting him through for just doing the freaking job that he wanted to.
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JW's just called
by l p inthe jws just called.
they are new to the congregation since i left in 2002/3.. they were offering a dvd for deaf people to 'learn what god requires of me".
i said there were no deaf people here.. the other guy that was just standing there asked if there were deaf people in this area.
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Chaserious
They are probably from a sign language congregation or group, and not associated with your local congregation. The foreign groups tend to use the phone books to try to find people, but since you can't pick the deaf out of a directory, they probably just go around and pick a random house or two in each neighborhood and ask if any deaf people live in the area. Horribly inefficient, but I'm not surprised. It's easy too, because they can easily spend a couple hours driving around without actually having to witness to anyone.
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Are They Cynically Shutting Down The Organization?
by metatron ini've raised this idea before but recent events seem to support it.
changes in the watchtower may be guided by more than a need for cash flow: they may simply be liquidating/shutting it down as discreetly as possible.. of course, this doesn't mean they stop working on their upstate ny country club - but it could mean that the throrough going exposure and disproof of their beliefs on the internet, when it emerged, took many of them by surprize, as it did many of us!
after awhile, they generally gave up trying to make any sense of their doctrines - and coupled with cash flow issues - moved towards a quiet retreat.. take a look at a few things:.
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Chaserious
I think that their demise of the WTS as we know it in the U.S. is still about about 10-20 years off, when they start making religions pay property taxes. There have been proponents of this all throughout American history, going back to James Madison, and it's already becoming the norm in Europe:
As the U.S. grows more secular, I think it's only a matter of time before they want to either collect taxes on the vast landholdings of religion, or put that property to productive use by someone who will pay taxes. They will probably give exemptions for the charitable arms of religions, such as those that run soup kitchens, hospitals, shelters, and the like - but of course that wouldn't help the WTS. This kind of development would be the tipping point - I would have to imagine that the congregations that could even afford to stay afloat would be able to send much less $$$ along to the WWW, not to mention the taxes on HQ. I wouldn't be shocked if anticipation of this is one of the factors driving them out of Brooklyn. One year of property taxes on the Brooklyn buildings at the height of their Brooklyn presence would make the Candace Conti verdict look like pocket change.
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New video: Stephen Lett warns about "Women's Lip"
by cedars inhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=citaz613koc.
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cedars.
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Chaserious
This guy is awful. Has anyone even used the term "women's lib" since around the 1970's? I am pretty sure that the only place I heard that term growing up was at the KH and from my parents, warning about how evil it was. In reality, I never got the sense that the sisters were quite as submissive and genteel as things would be in Lett's fantasy land. With a few exceptions, it seemed like most of the sisters were more or less equals in everyday life. The brothers loved to puff themselves up with this macho head of the house nonsense, but few of them really backed it up. I mean, wherever we went on vacation was usually where my mom wanted to go, not where the "head of the house" decided, and I think it was the same way more often than not among other families I knew in the WTS.
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Just Throwing Out The Idea Of A Class Action Suit Against The Watch Tower Corporations
by frankiespeakin ini think now that the governing body is in this big power grab in order to stay alive as an entity, thus tighten control, the more controling the more they open themselves up to legal consequences.. blood tranfusion forbiden by a authoritarian religous corporation.. disfellowshipping enforcement that brought pain and suffering thousands i'm sure these type of lawsuits could break them but i'm not well versed in law so i thought i would thow this out for discussion.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/class_action.
in law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued.
class actions are commonly referred to as class action suits; however, this phrase is redundant as the historical distinction between "actions" at law and "suits" in equity is no longer recognized.
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Chaserious
I'm mostly a lurker, but this thread caught my attention since I'm in law school. So don't take what I'm saying as authority. I have seen this discussed before here, and I'm sure there are other threads where this is adequately explained. But I would agree with much of what diamondliz said in the first post. Of the payment methods she mentioned, class actions attorney fees are basically always paid on a contingency. When they get settled, the defendants put in money for the plaintiffs' atttorney fees in addition to settlement funds and it all gets approved by the court. So no firm or lawyer is going to take a case unless they think there is going to be a settlement. And the problem with class actions is that the class has to be certified by a judge before it can even be a class action - until then it's just an individual lawsuit, or a group of individual lawsuits. And the type of class action that is being suggested has little to no chance of being certified. First of all, the people in the class have to be similarly situated in terms of damages. As an example, think of people who are exposed to asbestos, or get overcharged on their cell phone bills, or take a medicine that harms them - common types of class action suits. Most of the people in those classes will have similar types of damages, or at least can be classified into two or three classes. (For example, those who die, those who get really sick, and those who get a little bit sick). But when you think of the WTS class some are suggesting, you couldn't throw into one class people who are claiming all the different kinds of harm that the WTS causes. Maybe if you had a bunch of sex abuse victims, but not people who were harmed by blood policy, DFing, education doctrines, etc. Not to minimize all of the horrible things they have caused, but think of a giant corporation like Walmart that lots of people hate for various reasons. You couldn't just have one huge lawsuit against them by all of the people who hate them. In fact, recently the Supreme Court wouldn't even let a gender discrimination class action proceed against Walmart, despite a lot of evidence that there was a pattern of harm in that particular area. Bottom line is that it's not easy to get a class action certified.
This also doesn't take into account the free exercise clause implications that a lot of people have already mentioned. WTS would be treated as a religion, and not as a regular corporation. At least in the U.S., courts don't like to decide what is a religion and what is not (if they did, they could potentially be in violation of the establishment clause of the first amendment). If it looks even remotely like a religion, that's how they will treat it. (In other words, in response to what diamondliz said immediately above, they are not going to treat WTS like a regular corporation, or treat baptism like a business contract). Unfortunately, a lot of religions do things that are potentially harmful to their members. The Amish don't educate their children past 8th grade (a practice the Supreme Court has said is okay, even if a state requires higher education of its children), the Mormons and others shun, and Native Americans take drugs that are potentially harmful as part of their worship. None of this is going to be subject to liability by American courts in the present time. As was mentioned, as society gets more secular, standards may change. Free Exercise only protects as much as the Supreme Court says it protects, so perhaps we will change the state of affairs in the future.
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Chronicling the Highlights of Six Months Out
by Chaserious ini thought i would share a few highlights of my experiences over the last six months here, since i know you guys will understand, and i felt like organizing in writing a little.
this week marks 6 months being officially out of the wts, although it was about a year coming before that.
here are some of the things i have been able to do for the first time that i (and my wife in some cases) probably would not have been able to do otherwise!
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Chaserious
There's a FaceBook page with names. locations. and skills of exjws. I'll try to find it.
Thanks for your comments everyone.
@jamiebowers- I never imagined there'd be such a facebook page. The only thing is, I'd feel kind of bad since I don't really have any discernible skills myself to offer in return! -
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Chronicling the Highlights of Six Months Out
by Chaserious ini thought i would share a few highlights of my experiences over the last six months here, since i know you guys will understand, and i felt like organizing in writing a little.
this week marks 6 months being officially out of the wts, although it was about a year coming before that.
here are some of the things i have been able to do for the first time that i (and my wife in some cases) probably would not have been able to do otherwise!
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Chaserious
I thought I would share a few highlights of my experiences over the last six months here, since I know you guys will understand, and I felt like organizing in writing a little. This week marks 6 months being officially out of the WTS, although it was about a year coming before that. Here are some of the things I have been able to do for the first time that I (and my wife in some cases) probably would not have been able to do otherwise! - Attended my first birthday party (our neighbor's daughter's 5th birthday!) - Started graduate school. I had that lined up before leaving, but still! - Joined a league softball team. - Joined a league adult kickball team! - Celebrated my birthday for the first time. I missed the first 27, but the 28th time was definitely a charm! - Associated with people from work outside of working hours (*Gasp* The horrors!) - Played beer pong at a party - My wife and I made a great team! - Stayed out until 2:00 with my wife and friends singing karaoke at a bar. No FS to wake up for the next morning! - Enjoyed every single beautiful summer weekend, not wasting even one by driving hours to a convention and staying in some overpriced, crappy hotel because it was on the WTS list. - Felt free for the first time! Granted, there have been some drawbacks also. I suppose I should mention them as well, to be fair. - I haven't spoken to my parents or sister, although I did leave a message once and send a text so they can't say I'm the one who cut them off. I let them know right upfront that my intention wasn't to cut off contact with them. My wife also has become estranged from her parents, one of her two brothers, and her nephew. - I have also lost my network of people to help me fix things. Since so many witnesses are in the trades, there was never a shortage of help if something went wrong with the house/car. Particularly my father-in-law used to be able to fix about anything for us. But on the bright side, it has made me learn to be a little more handy. I hung a new storm door and replaced a leaky pipe in the basement, projects I probably wouldn't have tackled alone before. =) - The last drawback I have to mention is not seeing a little girl my wife and I were very fond of from the congregation. We were good friends with her parents. They are a nice, generous and humble couple. But I had a several hour talk with the husband, and he is very much a WTS "company man". My wife especially had really looked forward to seeing the girl grow up, maybe eventually along with one of ours, and it's kind of sad. She was about 18 months old when we left. Anyway, overall it's been the best spring/summer of my life. I don't see any need for "deprogramming" or whatever. It seems to take care of itself. I've read Crisis of Conscience, and have no doubt of the destructive and intentionally controlling nature of the WTS organization. I haven't been a frequent poster here, because personally I don't feel the need to revisit the past often (though I understand why some do), but at this first milestone, I wanted to journal things a little. Thanks for reading!