Posts by Anony Mous

15

Russian raid on 50 Jehovahs witnesses

by Diogenesister in

there has been a raid on a large jehovahs witness gathering in norilsk, above the arctic circle, according to the moscow times.. a building with 50 jws inside was surrounded by masked, armed special forces forces who burst into the building and demanded they surrender all electronic devices.. i'll link the article but it's obviously going to drive these witnesses deeper into the religion.

not to mention the images conjured up in the report are likely to be used by watchtower as more fear mongering, since its very much like last year's terrifying assembly videos where witnesses were huddled in a field and surrounded with similarly masked, armed men.. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/10/22/russian-special-agents-raid-jehovahs-witnesses-resort-as-crackdown-intensifies-a67855.

Anony Mous

In regards the criticism on the way they did it: Police have to be in full gear for these types of things because you don't want to be surprised. If someone gives you intel, it's not always correct, it could always be a trap.

As far as the rest, yes, we should condemn that Russia and Europe-Asia in general doesn't have freedom of religion, however the JW were warned on how they could avoid these situations. The WTBTS is explicitly avoiding compliance with local laws on family separation, child molestation and hate speech/extremism against other religions (which the EU also has but fails to enforce, France tried at least by revoking their tax exempt status).

The JW religion is allowed to exist if the congregations are allowed to exist independently from the WTBTS, not exfiltrate the tax exempt money donations from Russia to the US (which both in Russia and France have to be spent locally for 'charity' to be considered tax exempt) and they stop publishing 'incendiary' hateful language in their publications.

Freedom of speech is only a real thing in the US; Canada, the EU etc doesn't know freedom of speech in the way we are used to.

23

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is Dead

by cofty in

the so-called caliph, one of the most evil men in human history, has blown himself up along with three of his young children while being pursued by american special forces.. the ambition of isis was to expand the territory of the caliphate under the leadership of al-baghdadi to whom individual jihadists swear allegiance.

now isis have nowhere to call home and no leader.

what a pathetic bunch of losers.. they will of course appoint a new caliph and reprisal attacks will no doubt follow in western capitals by christmas but the more contemptible they appear they less likely it is that young men and women will join their delusional cause.. respect to the elite forces who hunted him down - those on the front line and the many intelligence specialists who made it possible.

Anony Mous

@redvip2000 - just because the media isn't reporting on it, doesn't mean it isn't being done. About a mile of border wall along the border with Mexico is constructed each day, according to the Pentagon.

https://www.defense.gov/explore/story/Article/1965907/dod-spokesman-provides-border-wall-update/source/GovDelivery/

28

Very weird "orb" experience last night....and i don't believe in paranormal

by Bad_Wolf in

jw
friends

so i got this night vision/security camera.

wyze is the brand.

this only happened once last night.

Anony Mous

It's dust, I have it on my home camera all the time. The IR LED reflects on "invisible" dust. Dust is everywhere.

24

Do You Think That Belonging To Certain Political Parties Suggests You Are Uneducated or Poor?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i hear some people say that if you are a republican or democrat that you must not be very educated, intelligent or monetarily stable.

.

do you think it’s proper to paint any person as less than favorable because of their political opinions?

Anony Mous

Not necessarily. It's an easy way of ignoring the people that aren't part of your group though.

The fact is that each party in a political party has policies aligned towards a particular group, as long as that group makes up a majority of the people. In the US the parties are somewhat divided across wealth distributions but there are many more axes that may align better with certain policies and people are the intersection of all those.

Democrats policies align well with those on or near welfare (expansion of it) and the ultra-rich (since they are benefiting by limiting trade through increased taxes on the middle class and government-approved/sponsored corporations).

On the other hand, Republicans have policies geared towards the middle class; reduction of taxes and free trade benefit small and medium sized corporations but this also includes the lower educated (manufacturing and starting businesses doesn't take a PhD).

It doesn't mean that Republicans are dumb and Democrats are poor, as a result of their policies part of their base makes up that demographic but it's by no means the entire party.

39

Candace Owens interviews Douglas Murray

by LoveUniHateExams in

yeah, so the candace owens show is apparently in london and douglas murray is the person interviewed.. they cover a range of topics that are current and connected to murray's new book (the madness of crowds: gender, race and identity).. i've not got his new book but it seems to be good.

owens and murray both make good points and it's a joy to listen to them together.. enjoy .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4o9yqrby9q.

Anony Mous

ideologies as widely separated as Leninism and Nazism

There is not much separating Leninism and Nazism. They're both Socialist (Nazi = Nationalist-Socialist) and Socialist or Communist are interchangeable in Marxist theory.

Both Leninism and Nazism wanted a dictatorship with a socialist mode of production. Nazism leans more on the supremacy of a specific race of people and production in service of the state, while Communism leans more on the supremacy of a specific group of people and production in service of the people (which turns out in all communist experiments to actually just be the state).

Sure, they had different group identities they protected vis-a-vis persecuted but when you take away all identifiers and compare the two systems, they're pretty much identical.

There's an entire philosophical theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nazism_and_Stalinism which everyone pretty much agrees - they're pretty much the same, if not comparable and if you're an apologist then you'll only be able to point out one of them is worse than the other.

9

Spinoza

by Hairtrigger in

did you know that when einstein attended some conferences in the numerous universities of the usa, the recurring question that the students asked him was:.

- do you believe in god?.

and he always answered:.

Anony Mous

Spinoza's god and Einstein's belief are relatively close to modern Judaism: God exists but he doesn't need you, be a good person and that will prove you believe in God, or 'everything you do could be an act of worship'.

Spinoza then takes it a step further and says "there is no virtue, you are absolutely free" which I personally don't believe is true. Sure, we are free to make our own choices, but without virtue those choices are unguided and would be of no consequence.

Now, I don't think we need a god to create or hold these virtues (which is the basis of all faiths), rather I believe these virtues evolved and are relatively plastic because otherwise we wouldn't be able to ask the question whether they're virtuous and if they didn't evolve, our virtues would be rigid throughout history. So virtues come from forming a society (they're necessary for each other), which flows into politics, the forces to change or defend these virtues which then flows into religion to codify and transmit the virtues.

32

District convention to be held in assembly hall instead of stadium

by NikL in

jw
friends

last night they announced that this summers district convention will be held at an assembly hall.. this is the first time i've seen this happen.

there are a couple of congregations in the same hall here and they aren't going to the same ones.

they are having multiple dates.. the hall they are going to use can only hold 1500 people max.. just wondering if maybe they just couldnt get anything bigger this year or if the falling numbers are playing a part in this decision.

Anony Mous

The conventions have been getting smaller in attendance year over year, using the same sites that used to hold "thousands" for a full week (when my parents were young) or 3 full (9am-4:30pm) days now only have to hold half of that for barely 16h in a long weekend.

Additionally, spaces have been getting a lot more expensive. With the economy doing well, more "worldly" conventions, games and entertainment are held and the prices go up accordingly while local councils want less and less to do with the never-ending money-pinching of the JW organizers.

19

Why do we see only brown-colored people in USA detention centers?

by Wonderment in

why are for the most part brown-colored people held in detention centers?

where are the rest of illegal immigrants?i think the question is valid -- as one website noted: "the u.s. government does not maintain reliable demographics of who is in immigration detention..." (https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/detention-statistics).

a canadian woman not too long ago said to me (spontaneously - i did not bring up the subject) the following words when she heard the live tv news broadcast, which dealt about the immigrants being held at dozens of detention centers in usa: "i am canadian, and i have been living here illegally for 29 years.

Anony Mous

I know people of all sorts that have been illegal. I even know a Canadian and other Europeans that have been detained and deported, but also known 'illegal' Asians and African people. The majority though, especially in the South are going to be South American.

One minor problem with the statistic on non-Mexican people right now is that a portion of that population is due to a massive overload of the immigration system, so you can be "illegal" after your visa expires (eg. student or work) because you've done all the paperwork but the INS is currently more than 1-2 years behind on processing paperwork so your status expires but you would be legal otherwise. Even just renewing without any sort of review takes more than 6 months so if you wait until the last day to renew, you will be illegal for ~3-6 months.

The difference is that the MAJORITY of Europeans, Asians and African people come here legally or are truly refugees and then their status changes or they don't know how to do the paperwork (especially a problem in African communities where people don't know how to read, let alone read English).

The people in detention centers on the other hand are only there temporarily unless they have clear gang affiliations. They are either detained crossing the border or are voluntarily surrendering at a port of entry. That would be primarily South American people because that's the only border people do this en masse. The detention centers only keep people for a couple of days (a lot of people from India, Pakistan and the Middle East have embedded themselves in the migrant caravans) and then release them into the interior with a court order to come back and make their case a certain time in the future, most end up never showing up and THEN they become illegals.

7

Real Estate / Legal Question re: KH Sales / Title Transfers

by RubaDub in

jw
friends

sorry about being a bit lazy and not researching this myself but when there is a real estate sale, as far as i know, this is public information and on record ( at least in most areas i am aware of).. a kh sale would be a public record.. but when a real title is transferred, isn't this public information also?

.

i ask this question because there seems to be some questions here that the publishers did not know the title of their kh had been transferred to the big borg.. any thoughts on this.. rub a dub.

Anony Mous

Yes, the title is transferred, it is recorded and public information, however in most smaller areas, this means a trip to the county office and perhaps even some money for a search and copy. In some cities it may be readily available but a title transfer is typically county level so not necessarily digitized.

In my area it is digitized, and I looked for it. It was 'transferred' in 2012 through a "correction of the deed" (the congregation has been there at least since the late 1980's so no reason to be transferring anything) to "Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses" (which is a WTBTS registered entity) but it doesn't list the correct congregation name anymore, only the congregation's area - the description refers to jw.org for further information.

However the title transfer was explicitly not done electronically and that kept all the information except for the actual transfer out of the system even though you can do these things entirely electronically these days.

34

If we could travel at light speed, would travel be 'instantaneous' for us??

by Bad_Wolf in

this might be confusing to think about.

we know that as you approach the speed of light, time slows down, if you were in a spaceship, time goes by quicker on earth.

we also know that distances between planets and such are measured at 'light years'.

Anony Mous

You cannot reach the speed of light if you want to have mass. Einstein's most famous equation (e=mc2) basically tells us that at the speed of light, you would turn into information (simultaneously a particle and wave form) and then the other laws of physics (entropy etc) make sure you most likely can't be put back together again.