And it's a pretty good Brexit deal as well, very little was given up, all promises on the UK were kept and the EU capitulated, as always, the few concessions made (around fishing etc) ends in a few years.
Anony Mous
JoinedPosts by Anony Mous
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7
Well done, Boris, for getting us a Brexit deal!
by LoveUniHateExams inboris johnson is often mocked, but he has recently achieved what former pms thought highly unlikely - boris has gotten the uk a brexit deal, and has got brexit done, keeping his manifesto promise.. well done, boris!
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Should A Covid Stimulus Bill Be Helping Other Countries?
by minimus ini think it should simply be there to help us citizens.
and besides giving money to other countries, stop giving money to the arts and entertainment..... give money to help taxpayers struggling with debt .
period!!!
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Anony Mous
Going back to the original question: Should a stimulus bill be helping other countries: Off course not, unless it is directly stimulating the original country.
Eg. you could see where keeping low oil prices by stimulating the economy of a good ally such as Israel or UAE would be helpful, since low cost oil is necessary to keep the economy going, especially since Biden is going to cut off domestic supplies.
I however don't see where helping terrorists like Iran (aka Palestine), or African countries that shift Islamic leadership every few years in bloody conflict, or China/Russia/EU that have its own communist agendas is any helpful.
On the topic of stimulus, quite honestly I don't think stimulus is helpful at all. Bush did a major stimulus bill, Obama then came along and raised taxes and healthcare costs to pay for it all. Under Obama we payed more taxes EVERY YEAR than any of us received in the stimulus and our deficit still grew out of control due to regulatory overhead. Trump somewhat balanced it out again with major regulatory reform which stimulated the economy to levels we hadn't seen since the 1950's, but he never really got around to fixing the deficit problem, which compared to GDP (pre-COVID) didn't really grow but also didn't get reduced.
You want real stimulus: cut taxes and regulations. Why do we give people $600 when 4 months from now we have to pay much more than that in income taxes? Simply cut income taxes by $600-2000/year.
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Was Jesus Born on December 25th?
by Sea Breeze inwe were told by watchtower that no way jesus was born on dec. 25th.
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what do you think now?.
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Anony Mous
@Sea Breeze: There is a difference between biblical/religious scholarship and archeological scholarship. The biblical and religious scholarship, even the atheist ones, do not deny that a Jesus-character existed in Abrahamic mythology, nobody really does, but that character is also tied to other characters that came before, similar messianic figures came both before and after.
The archeological scholarship however does not presume a real Jesus existed (at least not since the 1900s) when the Bible said he did. There is no archeological evidence of the person Jesus existing, his birth place of Bethlehem did not exist until decades later, there is no evidence of a person named Jesus of Nazareth being crucified in Roman records, there is no evidence of him or his family (Josef, Mary etc) in any Jewish records either, there is no evidence of any notable magician or prophet in contemporary writings either and all of the gospels were written generations later than when they were supposed to be. Even the lineage of David has recently been proven to be completely mythical, there are no other records than the Bible to prove David existed or any of his children down to Mary.
Jesus is commonly accepted to be an amalgam of several Jewish scholars and the stories based on sectarian writings from the era with heavy influences from other religions. Jesus has always been a myth based on older myths.
If someone finds a Tolkien book in the 30th century, they would be able to make pretty much all the same arguments that Christians use to defend Jesus to defend the existence of Frodo and Sauroman, actually, the Tolkien books, even those written after his death, are much more coherent than the Bible stories.
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Anony Mous
There's a big difference between who claims to be a JW and who is actually a JW.
- JW Periphery: There are those that claim they are JW to a third party researcher: estimated to be ~14M people worldwide, this could be people that were raised, have been baptized or are studying, those that sometimes still attend, those that only attend for the memorial or those that still believe but don't attend etc etc they never really took up another religion, so they're often still counted among the JW by a third party.
- JW Adherents: There are those that the WTBTS claim to be a JW: estimated to be ~7M people worldwide, these are all the people that have been baptized and are regularly doing whatever qualifies them to be counted. These include PIMO, some apostates, some that go through the motions, those that do the minimum in public but in private don't really do anything, those that repeatedly get disfellowshipped for smoking or adultery and then get reinstated a few months later.
- Sheep: There are those that conform to all of it, both in public and in private, but don't really do 'more' than meet the requirements. They are children and family of elders and pioneers, those that have some form of appointment and have to keep up appearances or want the social interaction. They may not believe all of it but they would never say so out loud. I think that's about 2M people, it's really hard to quantify as you have to be "inside", but I would say that accounts for ~30% of any congregation I've ever been in. If the really hard times come, or the "core" falls out of their social fabric (for whatever reason - death, disfellowshipping etc), they quickly spin out to the JW periphery described above and within a few years or a generation they disappear completely.
- Goats: There are those that are hardcore JW's for life. They are pioneers and elders that truly believe. I think based on my personal experience, we're talking less than 500K-1M worldwide and dwindling faster than any of the above groups. They are the ones having part time jobs and giving everything to the WTBTS, they are hard on everyone around them to the point of sociopathy. When they wake up, they crash quickly out of the organization.
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Who was it who ''rescued'', or ''saved'' you?
by Beth Sarim infrom the borg?.
i point to none other than cal lehman and the towerwatch ministries.
towewatch.com.. the years following the collapse of the ussr and the 1995 generation left a bad taste in my mouth for a long time.
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Anony Mous
I think it was a combination of this site, the Watchtower Library and some online ministries for me, that finally brought me over the edge
I've always had doubts, people that made me really think were a set of pioneers/elders in a congregation who posed difficult questions where the Bible and Watchtower doctrine don't match. Surprisingly they're still JW's to date, but they had raised serious doubts. They believed their own logical conclusions were wrong and they didn't study hard enough, these were people that were dedicated for pretty much most of their life, they had part time or no jobs, lived in a trailer and they couldn't understand it, why would I be able to.
One day I got a call to make a talk about a bible verse that night, the person that was scheduled couldn't do it, the Watchtower Library was only on Windows and I couldn't get it to work on my Mac, so I went and looked online, I found a discussion on this site on the topic and then some other online ministries had full bible-reasoned sermons on the topic. I copied a sermon, modified it a bit and did the talk.
I then got a talking to from the elders, I said, it was wholly reasoned from the Bible, what was wrong with it. They said "the Bible verses weren't wrong but your explanation wasn't from the Watchtower". I said "I quoted literally from bible verse to bible verse" and they said "you can do that research in your personal study, but in a talk you should quote what the Watchtower publication says, not just the Bible". That started me thinking and brought me down the rabbit hole that is this site and other sites like it.
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Hip Replacement Surgery
by titch ini'm not really sure where to put this post or "thread", so i'll just put it in the physical activities area.
i just want to know if anyone on the forum has any experience with having a hip replacement surgery done on them, or perhaps a friend or relative.
what was your experience, if it was you?
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Anony Mous
I've sat through the medical research side of things:
- There is no replacement for your real original hip, a good surgeon will get it down with precision, but it does not flex the same way, does not conduct heat the same way etc.
- If you do need it done, get a good surgeon, it may be routine, but if they cut and file too much from your leg bone you will have continuous problems. Your body does not adapt to the difference.
- Make sure you get the latest technology, talk to your doctor. In the US metal-on-metal is no longer FDA approved, but it's still done in Europe, Canada and other socialized medicine systems because of its low cost, if you live there, you may want to consider private insurance or taking a plane ride to the US.
Plastic likewise has issues with buildup of plastic shavings. Full ceramic is currently the gold standard and there are some carbon fiber options in development. There are also some procedures that have started using more bone-preserving procedures, this may or may not be applicable, but if your doctor doesn't know about these options, or tells you they're unnecessary, get another doctor.
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-0:6 negative growth 2020 service year
by Fadeaway1962 inphttps://www.jw.org/finder?wtlocale=e&pub=syr20&srcid=share .
plus another increase in memorial partakes number etc .
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Anony Mous
Interesting to see the numbers between the memorial attendance and active publishers is diverging. Since a lot of people that come to these are inactive/irregular (the number of "worldly people" per congregation are counted on one hand), this shows a growing number of people that have 'given up', it seems to be ~2:1 and only do this as a church/family obligation.
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Who owns the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
by pistolpete inactually no one does.. i know this is a concept that can be hard for some to grasp, considering all other forms of organizations like sole proprietorship, general partnership, an llc, or a for profit corporation.
these organizations are created legally for the simple purpose of making a profit.. but unlike a for profit corporation,---- a nonprofit corporation is formed to carry out-.
whether that be religious, educational, charitable, scientific or other qualifying purpose.
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Anony Mous
Here's the deal:
A non-profit can make a profit, they just can't redistribute their profits to private individuals (so you can't have shareholders vis-a-vis you won't attract any investors), but they can make a profit, invest in things like real estate and the stock market. The only difference is that they don't pay taxes on income below the profit threshold, so if you make $1B and spend $1B you don't pay taxes, if you make $1.5B, you pay taxes on the $500M unless you re-invest them, so you can spend $500M in real-estate and 'development' and not pay any taxes.
Most Universities are non-profits, yet they have billions in the bank for which they do not have to pay taxes. Many non-profit CEO's are in the top 100 when it comes to income so the IRS rules around reasonable renumeration are very, very lax if not non-existing, you just can't make it look like you're benefiting a private person, but you could make your CEO's and board members very wealthy or give them gifts, or provide them with room & board.
Moreover, religious organizations are toxic to the IRS regulators, the Supreme Court has ruled that there is very little you can do without interfering in their religious tenets which is a first amendment violation. So if your religion says that your religion needs a fleet of yachts for its leaders (eg. Scientology), well, that is your first amendment right.
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Joe Biden Dumps Black Lives Matter, lol
by LoveUniHateExams inblm helped fund joe biden's election campaign and now president-elect biden doesn't want to know.. hilarious!
xd.
btw - you get what you voted for, blm.
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Anony Mous
@minimus: I do agree, Biden is a political chameleon though, he's whatever he needs to be to get in and keep power. He's been on every side of every issue, abortion, guns, crime, ... there was a point he was talking about how he owns a number of guns, now he wants to ban them, he was the driver behind the 1994 crime bill which he now opposes, he's against socialism during the campaign and is now embracing the socialists within his cabinet.
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Time, times and half a time - nerd time
by Anony Mous inso, the famous 607 calculation to 1914 involves the above prophecy.
the common explanation is that time is one unit, times is an unsubstantiated number of units.. to prove you can make it say any date, we must write it as a formula:.
date = t + nt + 0.5t where n >= 2. so simplified:.
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Anony Mous
@Overrated: Only when my prophecies don't come true, then 337 (the angel number for inner peace) was overlapping 336 and off course YOU must have been the one misinterpreting what the faithful and discreet mathematics said.
Off course you shouldn't blame me for giving up your education, your career and children until then, maths is never wrong.