It has never actually appealed to me, but then each to their own! That being said, my wife and I have agreed to next year join a friend on a cruise to mark his 60th birthday.
Bungi Bill
JoinedPosts by Bungi Bill
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Anyone go on a cruise?
by NewYork44M injust finished a 7-day cruise from nyc on norwegian cruise line (ncl- gem).
this is my first cruise in 30 years, so my past experience does not count.. overall, a great experience.
ncl does a great job.
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Bungi Bill
I didn't see Kevin Bloody Wilson's name mentioned on anywhere?
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Bungi Bill
The "Deep things of Jehovah" would make Jack and the Beanstalk seem a very intellectual work!
(Although when old Crazy Fred was at large, some of their utterances did at least have some appearance of depth).
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The Watchtower's Medical Expert
by Lee Elder ina new article by s. sparrow, published today at ajwrb, investigates dr. joachim boldt, one of the watchtower's “bloodless medicine” experts.
a notorious “medical pretender” who has exposed jw's to additional needless risk.
watchtower continues to cite this source, and fails to expose him as a fraud.
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Bungi Bill
Yet another example of the WTS's use of psuedoscience.
Yet another case of unless it's corroborated from another source, disregard anything you hear (or read) from that lot!
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X/LDS vs X/JW!!!Who is more twisted and bitter.
by joe134cd insince leaving the jws i have become fascinated by the lds church, because of the similarities both organisations have.
in reading x-mo forums i get the impression that they tend to be not as bitter and as twisted as xjw.
this is surprising as i think the lds is a bigger con than the jws.
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Bungi Bill
While I have known a number of LDS people, I have yet to meet an ex-Mormon, so cannot comment there.
From all that I have been able to glean from observation, the LDS is quite family-oriented. That does contrast strongly with the JWs, whom I consider to be extremely unfriendly toward families (I could almost write a book about that, but not right now!)
Noteworthy, too, I think are certain remarks recalled by Raymond Franz in Crisis of Conscience.
According to him, the WTS's then president, Nathan Knorr once even volunteered that " the Mormons look after their people better than we do."
Another once highly-placed Jehovahs Witness, WC Stevenson, summed up the whole JW experience as follows (quoting from his 1968 work Inside Story of Jehovahs Witnesses):
"No other religious group would demand so much from its members, in return for so little."
This may well explain why ex-LDS people don't harbour the same ill-feeling towards the religion as we ex-JWs tend to do.
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A Reminder of the time when Jerusalem was a Christian City
by fulltimestudent inconstruction workers in jerusalem have uncovered an inscription that recalls the era when jerusalem could be described as a christian city.
this is the story of how jerusalem changed into a christian city for a brief period in its history.
how did it happen?
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Bungi Bill
fulltimestudent,
You have a PM
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A Reminder of the time when Jerusalem was a Christian City
by fulltimestudent inconstruction workers in jerusalem have uncovered an inscription that recalls the era when jerusalem could be described as a christian city.
this is the story of how jerusalem changed into a christian city for a brief period in its history.
how did it happen?
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Bungi Bill
David_Jay
You win! Your post is right, mine is wrong.
One of the more subtle ways of telling the other person to "SHUT UP", I would think?
Seriously though, you have just reminded me that while vigorous debating is a very necessary process, it ought to only ever be confined to matters of life and death. (Although we could all too easily get into a vigorous debate about what matters come under the heading "Life and Death"!!!)
My interest in the matters under discussion here is as a history buff, and in particular Middle East history. I cannot explain why, but I have always had a particular fascination with the Middle East. (Perhaps this is what partly explains how I ended up becoming ensnared with the JWs? I still cannot answer that one). As I may have already mentioned regarding other threads, I have always appreciated your posts, introducing as they do thoughts from a Jewish perspective. Something quite foreign to most of us, I'm sure.
I only ask that in all fairness you go back and look back at what you offered:
You have piqued my curiosity here, and I certainly shall do as you suggest. On this and other matters, I am happy to be corrected.
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A Reminder of the time when Jerusalem was a Christian City
by fulltimestudent inconstruction workers in jerusalem have uncovered an inscription that recalls the era when jerusalem could be described as a christian city.
this is the story of how jerusalem changed into a christian city for a brief period in its history.
how did it happen?
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Bungi Bill
David_Jay,
Firstly, I know that you did mention two Jewish groups who used terrorist methods against the British Administration. If I gave any impression otherwise, then I apologise for that.
In most if not all guerrilla type conflicts (sometimes also described as "brushfire wars, "irregular wars or "low intensity wars") things are often not altogether black-and-white. This is certainly the case with the changing loyalties that you describe in post-WWII Palestine.
By its very nature, a guerrilla type campaign causes major disruption out of all proportion to the number of fighters involved - particularly when carried out in an urban setting. For example, during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1997, the IRA fielded only about 700 fighters. Likewise, during the Malayan Emergency, the British army calculated that it required ten soldiers to be deployed on the peninsula for every one guerrilla fighter the Communists had operating in the jungle. At an earlier time in South Africa, a mere handful of Boer commandos ran ragged the 400,000 British and Imperial soldiers deployed against them during the Anglo-Boer War (1899 - 1902). One could go on and on about the disparity in numbers during guerrilla wars !
The story was much the same in the Palestine Mandate. 100, 000 British troops (i.e. one for every five of the Jewish population) could not contain a terrorist campaign being waged by only a small number of Jewish fighters. (Certainly, as you say, by no means were all the Jewish residents were terrorists!) The results were, though, that very quickly the police were bottled up inside their forts; the army hardly dared venture outside its fortified camps, and the roads in between were dangerous to use because of the prevalence what we now know of as "Improvised Explosive Devices" (IEDs).
A Britain that was by then practically bankrupt from its efforts in fighting a World War simply could not afford to keep up such a fight. (That, too, is another strategy of guerrilla warfare; make the conflict such a long, drawn out, bloody and costly affair as to be ultimately not worth the effort).
My case, though, is that Britain had already decided to evacuate its forces from the Palestine Mandate before the civil war broke out. Britain announced this decision in September of 1947, whereas civil war broke out at the end of November that same year.
PS: My knowledge of Middle East history in more modern times does exceed by a margin my knowledge of Bar Kokhba's rebellion - mainly because I obtained it from sources other than the WTS!
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A Reminder of the time when Jerusalem was a Christian City
by fulltimestudent inconstruction workers in jerusalem have uncovered an inscription that recalls the era when jerusalem could be described as a christian city.
this is the story of how jerusalem changed into a christian city for a brief period in its history.
how did it happen?
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Bungi Bill
David_Jay,
Certainly, the WTS version of history is - to put it very mildly - somewhat edited!
Prior to this post by fulltimestudent, I for one had never even heard of Bar Kokba's revolt of of 135 CE (and I consider myself to be something of a student of history!) Their version of Jewish-Roman conflict would have us believe that the events of 70 CE are very similar to what they claim happened previously in 607 BCE.
I don't know, though, that it was the civil war in Palestine that finally drove the British out. My understanding of matters is that civil war erupted in earnest once it became obvious that Britain was going to withdraw from Palestine when its League of Nations Mandate expired in May of 1948. In other words, the civil war was a result of British intentions to withdraw from Palestine, rather than the cause of that decision.
Britain need not have abandoned Palestine just because its mandate expired. It could have carried the mandate over as a United Nations Trust Territory, as it had already done with its Tanganyika Territory (now part of Tanzania). However, the ongoing Jewish Insurrection made it impossible for the British Administration to effectively govern the territory. This meant that while Britain didn't formally evacuate Palestine until May of 1948, to all intents and purposes its rule had ended several years before that.
(That, incidently, is the aim of guerilla warfare. For an excellent description of how a successful guerilla campaign works, as well as an even better description of how it can be defeated, Sir Robert Thompson's Defeating a Communist Insurgency is a very informative read. Also highly recommended is Noel Barber's War of the Running Dogs. I don't believe anybody can fully comprehend what went on in Palestine during those immediate post WWII years without first reading those two works on the Malayan Emergency - those by Sir Robert Thompson and Noel Barber. Although the Malayan Emergency was a campaign against a Communist guerilla army, many its principles also hold true against any other type of insurgency. And yes, an important part of a successful guerilla campaign is the Political and Public Relations / Propaganda / "Phsych-op" campaign).
That Jewish groups did use what would elsewhere be branded "terrorist" methods is readily admitted to even by such Jewish writers as the late Leon Uris (one of my favourite authors, incidentally). Furthermore, these activities continued up to and even after Britain's evacuation of the territory. For example, the UN Mediator for Palestine, Count Bernadotte, was assassinated in September 1948 by members of a Jewish terrorist unit, the Stern Gang.
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A Reminder of the time when Jerusalem was a Christian City
by fulltimestudent inconstruction workers in jerusalem have uncovered an inscription that recalls the era when jerusalem could be described as a christian city.
this is the story of how jerusalem changed into a christian city for a brief period in its history.
how did it happen?
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Bungi Bill
fulltimestudent,
Another very interesting post. Always good to hear the many parts of Middle East history that the WTS never made mention of!