What was so special about the Gwadar Port agreement?
Anil gupta explains:
fulltimestudent
JoinedPosts by fulltimestudent
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Pakistan welcomes China's President to Pakistan
by fulltimestudent ina week ago, china's president xi visited pakistan.
the visit took place against background news that the pakistan government had extended the lease on gwadar port (built by the chinese) to forty years.
during xi's visit agreements were formalised on sections of a huge infrastructure agreement that will link the port to china's western provinces.
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Pakistan welcomes China's President to Pakistan
by fulltimestudent ina week ago, china's president xi visited pakistan.
the visit took place against background news that the pakistan government had extended the lease on gwadar port (built by the chinese) to forty years.
during xi's visit agreements were formalised on sections of a huge infrastructure agreement that will link the port to china's western provinces.
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fulltimestudent
A week ago, China's President Xi visited Pakistan. The visit took place against background news that the Pakistan government had extended the lease on Gwadar Port (built by the Chinese) to forty years. During Xi's visit agreements were formalised on sections of a huge infrastructure agreement that will link the port to China's western provinces.
The Pakistan Airforce provided an aerial Guard of Honor to escort the Presidential plane from the border: (The fighter planes are a joint China-Pakistan development)
https://www.facebook.com/ApertureSensation/videos/vb.567503256680182/779033985527107/?type=2&theater
or
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What happens when an elder bullys witnesses, both young and old
by fulltimestudent inmental and physical intimidation (bullying) while young increases the probability of mental illness as an adult.
that's the conclusion of a recent study.. "bullying may be more scarring than child maltreatment because while society recognizes child abuse as a serious problem, and supports its victims, people just don't see bullying the same way, wolke said.
"there're still people out there who think that bullying is a normal rite of passage you go through and toughen up, etc.," he said.but bullying leaves people with poor self-esteem and a lasting sense of distrust of other people, he told live science.
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fulltimestudent
Mental and physical intimidation (bullying) while young increases the probability of mental illness as an adult. That's the conclusion of a recent study.
"Bullying may be more scarring than child maltreatment because while society recognizes child abuse as a serious problem, and supports its victims, people just don't see bullying the same way, Wolke said. "There're still people out there who think that bullying is a normal rite of passage — you go through and toughen up, etc.," he said.
But bullying leaves people with poor self-esteem and a lasting sense of distrust of other people, he told Live Science. "Being socially excluded and being a social outcast is about the worst stress that we can experience, more than other pains."
Although people are becoming more aware of how harmful bullying can be, efforts in the United .States. to tackle the problem are spotty, said William Copeland, an associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, who helped conduct the study. "I think it's often the case that children that are bullied are not always supported in that, and told to deal with it themselves," Copeland said."Reference: http://www.livescience.com/50641-bullying-child-maltreatment-mental-health.html?
Many elders within the J/witness organisation excuse their bullying tactics, with the excuse that they are being strong for Jehovah. Which may partly explain why so many young people are leaving the witness organisation.
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The Intellectual Weakness of Christianity
by fulltimestudent ini liked this alvin toffler quote:.
how apt it is for those who set their minds in the concrete of faith.. how apt it is, for jehovah's witnesses who are not allowed to doubt, even when the teachings of the organisation appear to be idiotic.. back in the 1930's the j.witnesses predecessors were forced to believe that the "princes of old," were going to come back and live in joe rutherford's big californian mansion.. how stupid was that!
time forced them to unlearn that, but only because they were told they could.. how stupid to let someone else decide what you can think!!!
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fulltimestudent
I liked this Alvin Toffler quote:
How apt it is for those who set their minds in the concrete of faith.
How apt it is, for Jehovah's witnesses who are NOT allowed to doubt, even when the teachings of the organisation appear to be idiotic.
Back in the 1930's the J.witnesses predecessors were forced to believe that the "Princes of old," were going to come back and live in Joe Rutherford's big Californian mansion.
How stupid was that! Time forced them to unlearn that, but only because they were told they could.
How stupid to let someone else decide what you can think!!!!
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effect of shunning
by lancelink ini have read quite a bit on this site about the effect of shunning, mainly how the person being shunned reacts to it.
and then there is the wt reaction, how everything is the df'ed persons fault.. well, i ran across this article today.
some might think it is way too off base with the drug problem that this girl faced.. but the point i got out of it is how important it is to help the person with the problem instead of walking away and expecting that ignorance will cure the problem.
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fulltimestudent
talesin:The pain of feeling utterly alone. I can easily understand the need to escape that.
It's hard to *not* want to escape pain.
It's a strange thing about our society (to me). We fail to acknowledge that behaviour has causation, and issues are better resolved than ignored - both on a personal and societal level.Absolutely!
And the witnesses will find out that exclusion is not a good policy.
They should be asking why there is this growing hostility to them? How many of us would bother with expressing our feelings here and to others if we had not been excluded (cut off) from our families.
Of course, with minds set in concrete like faith, they'll keep blaming the devil, when a moments reflection would tell them the stark truth - they are bringing the disaster they face as an organisation on themselves.
Little by little, like drops of water wearing away a stone, the expressed anger of excluded family members will wear away the witness organisation.
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The growing consensus on the permeability of sexual/gender identity- Ollie's brave journey
by fulltimestudent inmy gayxjw friend thinks i should post this story from today's aussie news.
(he dislikes jws so much that he even refuses to post here).
actually he's suggested two stories, but i'll consider the other story later.. this is actually a nice story about the growing acceptance of the fact that sexuality and gender is not as fixed as the genesis story pretends.. it is difficult to imagine a situation more fraught with emotion than parents discovering that their child is transgender, that is there is a dissonance between the mind's sexuality/gender and the body.. in australia, however, such parents (i doubt that jw parents, with a mind-set made form concrete would consider this) now have a source of assistance.. so meet ollie, birth name molly, but now freed to solve the dissonance he once felt between his brain (mind) and his body.. .
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fulltimestudent
My GAYXJW friend thinks I should post this story from today's Aussie news. (He dislikes Jws so much that he even refuses to post here). Actually he's suggested two stories, but I'll consider the other story later.
This is actually a nice story about the growing acceptance of the fact that sexuality and gender is not as fixed as the Genesis story pretends.
It is difficult to imagine a situation more fraught with emotion than parents discovering that their child is transgender, that is there is a dissonance between the mind's sexuality/gender and the body.
In Australia, however, such parents (I doubt that JW parents, with a mind-set made form concrete would consider this) now have a source of assistance.
So meet Ollie, birth name Molly, but now freed to solve the dissonance he once felt between his brain (mind) and his body.
Ollie, now 12, has been a patient at the Royal Children's Hospital's gender dysphoria clinic for the past two years.
The clinic, the only one in Australia, treats children between the ages of five and 18 and has experienced a huge growth in demand since it was established in 2003 by Associate Professor Campbell Paul, a child and adolescent psychiatrist.
From two patients in 2003, it has grown to 104 in 2014, with more expected this year.The really wonderful thing (to me) is the acceptance that Ollie's change has met with at such important places of social interchange as his school. Humans often find it difficult to be the odd man out, as the saying goes.
How this works is explained by one of the clinic's staff:
"Sex" refers to a person's physical appearance, determined by their chromosomes and hormones, Dr Michelle Telfer, the clinical leader at the hospital's centre for adolescent health, explains.
"Gender" refers to their innate sense of being male, female, or somewhere in between. A transgender person's sex and gender do not match. When this causes severe distress it is called gender dysphoria.
When Ollie was younger he did not know what transgender meant. But he always felt like a boy.
He hated wearing dresses. At eight he got a short, short haircut. He became more distraught at going to school, and cried at night.
Oliver's parents, Peter and Sarah, decided it was important to get Oliver into the clinic and onto "puberty blockers".
These medications stop the procession of normal puberty and are totally reversible. They are used to decrease the distress a young person feels from bodily changes they do not want, Dr Telfer says.
As the patient matures and is able to make long-term decisions they can move onto cross hormone medication, which is not totally reversible.More on this story at:
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Polytheism in the Book of Daniel, a late second temple religious document
by fulltimestudent inas jehovah's witnesses we committed ourselves to a blind belief in a monotheistic judaism that was automatically transmitted to a new religious organisation, started (we were taught) by jesus.. that's the premise which this thread will discuss.
i suggest that sufficient evidence is available to throw doubt on both those beliefs.
so this thread will argue (over about a week-hopefully) that:.
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fulltimestudent
jhine7 hours agoGosh ,thank you for a very comprehensive reply to my question ! Yes it was very interesting . Strip away the cultural differences , clothes , food etc and human beings really are very alike .
JanSometimes, there can be marked differences. It seems fair to suggest that the earliest traces of religious thought indicate that shamanism was the original religious thinking. The shaman could be seen as the gate through which the spirit world could be contacted. The shaman therefore, could be seen as the predecessor of all religious leaders, (including elders (grin). We can study active versions of shamanism in may places in the world.
Tibet, where a syncretistic version of Buddhism developed between Indian Buddhism and the shamanistic beliefs of native Tibetans. I've no time at present to develop the idea, but essentially in many forms of shamanism, the spirits are everywhere, in special rocks, streams hills/mountains etc. Tibetan buddhism may have taken that idea over and saw the whole land as a battle between the original spirits (demons) and the guardians of the Buddhas.
In Japan, shintoism is a shamanistic religion, with spirits everywhere, I've taken the explanations below verbatim from a Japanese tourist guide. It seems to describe shintoism quite well.
Shinto does not have a founder nor does it have sacred scriptures like the sutras or the bible. Propaganda and preaching are not common either, because Shinto is deeply rooted in the Japanese people and traditions.
"Shinto gods" are called kami. They are sacred spirits which take the form of things and concepts important to life, such as wind, rain, mountains, trees, rivers and fertility. Humans become kami after they die and are revered by their families as ancestral kami. The kami of extraordinary people are even enshrined at some shrines. The Sun Goddess Amaterasu is considered Shinto's most important kami.
Some prominent rocks are worshiped as kami. In contrast to many monotheist religions, there are no absolutes in Shinto. There is no absolute right and wrong, and nobody is perfect. Shinto is an optimistic faith, as humans are thought to be fundamentally good, and evil is believed to be caused by evil spirits. Consequently, the purpose of most Shinto rituals is to keep away evil spirits by purification, prayers and offerings to the kami.
Shinto shrines are the places of worship and the homes of kami. Most shrines celebrate festivals(matsuri) regularly in order to show the kami the outside world. Please read more on our special information pages about shrines and festivals.Japanese shamanism was inherited from the Japanese ancestors from the mainland, where we can still find in the Siberian tribes, something that may be akin to the original shamanism. This is so interesting as we have a method of comparison. Around 18,000 years ago some of those Siberian people crossed into North America and proceeded to colonise both North and South America. They brought their native shamanism with them, so comparisons can be made.
For later changes within Asia may I recommend Richard Folz's book, "Religions of the Silk Road-Premodern Patterns of Globalisation."
In everything, though, I believe we should take the advice of Chinese thinker, Zheng Yi (1033-1107 CE):
"A student must first of all learn to doubt."
and
"Follow the path of inquiry and study."
So armed with an inquiring mind, that is prepared to doubt conclusions one always has a mind open to change.
The very last thing the JW overlords want their adherents to have.
Of course, Christians may argue that they also follow the path of inquiry and study, but as simplistic simon has posted, you must do so in"faith."
There is no room for doubt in simplisticSimon's world view.
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Polytheism in the Book of Daniel, a late second temple religious document
by fulltimestudent inas jehovah's witnesses we committed ourselves to a blind belief in a monotheistic judaism that was automatically transmitted to a new religious organisation, started (we were taught) by jesus.. that's the premise which this thread will discuss.
i suggest that sufficient evidence is available to throw doubt on both those beliefs.
so this thread will argue (over about a week-hopefully) that:.
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fulltimestudent
3 days ago
Fulltime , have you found much in common between Eastern and Western religious thought , like the " do unto others " kinda thinking ? I would be interested in how much we have in common , not necessarily because of transfer of thinking but just because of our shared humanity .
Jan
I suggest that the aspirations of our shared humanity are the basis of much religious and philosophical thinking. It comes across rather clearly in this youtube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=415&v=2Ci613QcC5E
Judeao/Christian teachings on love are NOT unique, a point that the above video makes.
To illustrate, we can look to two of the great thinkers of ancient China, Kong zi (551-479 BCE)-(Confucius) and Mozi (470-391 BCE)
Kong zi based his teachings on 'jen' (humanity) and Mo zi based his on the concept of righteousness. Which sound similar, and in some ways were, but in the field of human relationships there was a sharp divergence, (at least in the theory). Thus in Kong zi's thought, 'love' should embrace all, but must start with one's parents. Hence, his view of love had distinctions. Whereas Mozi taught a truly Universal love, (i.e.) with no distinctions. Mo zi once walked (so the story goes) for ten days and nights in an effort to dissuade the ruler of a small state from going to war with another state. (Mozi condemned wars).
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And possibly the Law code of Hammurabi, which starts on page 6 of this link, is another example:
http://www.general-intelligence.com/library/hr.pdf,
One example of Hammurabi's lawcode - quite a few copies have been recovered.
Laws, need lawmakers/givers, so note the sculptured figures on another copy.
So this may also an example of human intelligence working out rules that assist in preventing chaos by defining human behaviour.
The Wikepedia entry (from where those two illustrations were found) notes:
Earlier collections of laws include the Code of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (c. 2050 BC), the Laws of Eshnunna (c. 1930 BC) and the codex of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (c. 1870 BC), while later ones include the Hittite laws, the Assyrian laws, and Mosaic Law.[10] These codes come from similar cultures in a relatively small geographical area, and they have passages which resemble each other.[11]
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
And, I guess it will come as no surprise, that a surviving copy of Hammurabi's code (dated to circa 1700BCE) has been found. Wikipedia comments:
In July, 2010, archaeologists reported that a fragmentary Akkadian cuneiform tablet was discovered at Tel Hazor, Israel, containing a c. 1700 BC text that was said to be partly parallel to portions of the Hammurabi code. The Hazor law code fragments are currently being prepared for publication by a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[20]
So was the Mosaic code original, or was it based on previous models. Difficult to prove either way.
Another common concept that I've noted is the need to train children. Rather obvious for humans, but again the Biblical versions are not unique.
So clearly, certain human conditions/problems seem to produce common reactions. But for me, the most interesting aspects of human interaction is when we can find evidence of a syncretic reaction to an interface between different thought systems.
Here's an example:
Looking at this image of Buddhist statue (dated to first/second century CE), what do we notice? I saw nothing special until it was pointed out to me that the robe clothing the Buddha is Greek. The statue comes from modern day Afghanistan, an area conquered by Alexander (the great) and incorporated into the successor Seleucid Empire. Thus bringing Hellenistic influences into Buddhism.
In this sculpture:
Dated to second century CE, we see a Hellenistic 'Hercules' figure as a protector of the Buddha.
When Buddhism hit China, (starting about the last century BCE) there was little reaction at first, but eventually we can trace the interaction and reactions of arguments between Buddhist practioners and those who held to Confucianism and Daoism.
And, an interesting development in Buddhism (no time/space to go into detail) was the development, likely in the first century BCE, of Mahayana Buddhism, with the idea that if you called on the name of one of the Buddhas, he would take you to his western paradise, when you died.
Descriptions of the western paradise are very similar to the "New Jerusalem" in the closing chapters of the Revelation.
Interesting, isnt it?
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Millions of abused kids in India
by fulltimestudent infrom an recent overview in the times of india:.
india a nation of child sex abusers?a survey conducted by ministry of women and child development in association with the united nations children's fund ( unicef) and a few indian ngos working for child's rights found that more than 53% of children in india are subjected to sexual abuse, but most don't report it.
the survey was conducted in 2007 and covered 13 states across the country with a sample size of 12,447. ngos are demanding an in-depth study to address the issue properly.
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fulltimestudent
From the same report:
Documentary filmmaker Sanjay Kumar Singh, who made the film Chuppi Todo — Break the Silence (2011) on CSA, says, "As per statistics, every second child in India is a victim of sexual abuse. Perpetrators are mostly known to these children. I took my film to various schools and children homes across the country to help youngsters recognize abuse, raise their voice against it and report it to a responsible adult. During these screenings, I came across many children who revealed that they have faced sexual abuse. It's a complex subject and needs to be dealt with great sensitivity."
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Millions of abused kids in India
by fulltimestudent infrom an recent overview in the times of india:.
india a nation of child sex abusers?a survey conducted by ministry of women and child development in association with the united nations children's fund ( unicef) and a few indian ngos working for child's rights found that more than 53% of children in india are subjected to sexual abuse, but most don't report it.
the survey was conducted in 2007 and covered 13 states across the country with a sample size of 12,447. ngos are demanding an in-depth study to address the issue properly.
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fulltimestudent
From an recent overview in The Times of India:
India — a nation of child sex abusers?
A survey conducted by Ministry of Women and Child Development in association with the United Nations Children's Fund ( Unicef) and a few Indian NGOs working for child's rights found that more than 53% of children in India are subjected to sexual abuse, but most don't report it. The survey was conducted in 2007 and covered 13 states across the country with a sample size of 12,447. NGOs are demanding an in-depth study to address the issue properly.
