Posts by Anony Mous

19

How on earth can WT lawyers continue to believe WT has God’s backing, when they see all the deception play out in Court.

by pistolpete in

here is a post on reddit from mark and kimmy o’ donnell, from the crusaders documentary,.

ask us anything.. mr. o'donnell gives his assessment of why wt lawyers continue to defend the child sex abuse cases that the organization continues to fight, even though they see firsthand the deception, the lies, the withholding of facts and dirty tactics used in court.

by an organization that claims to be god's earthly representative, and the only one to hold the truth.

Anony Mous

The real WT lawyers, video producers and website developers are all third party. They are all well versed in what they do and have clients much bigger than the JW.

How can a criminal defense lawyer sleep at night, if their client admits something illegal will happen in the future, they have a duty to report this, if there is admission of guilt and they consider this makes them in fact legally guilty, they generally will go into damage control mode and tell them that it is better to plead out, they generally have to present any factual evidence they are aware of in discovery, so they can kind of judge in advance how the case will go. 95-98% of cases in the US are plea deals, which is a great thing, you get the criminal in jail without going through expensive trials, since 1989, only ~30 people who plead guilty have later been exonerated (which doesn’t mean they weren’t involved or knowledgeable about the crime, some people plead guilty to avoid incriminating gang members or family who they know are the true guilty party).

The entire WTBTS defense is that they aren’t responsible for what their members do, this isn’t admission of guilt, but the lawyers know that if there is some culpability they will generally tell their client to settle. The WT lawyers aren’t generally criminal defense lawyers, they are corporate and civil law professionals and there the question isn’t who is guilty of a crime, but how much, if any, damages are due to the mistakes made in the organization they represent.

Cult members can simply explain away why they don’t have to report crimes committed by their members to the police. But it is not a policy they can hold without becoming civilly liable, so the current official policy is that the victim is free to report and that elders are personally responsible of making a report to hold to the law. The lawyers see that as similar to an HR policy that someone made up a long time ago and crossed them in the law. It’s not the leaders and organization that did the crime, but they made a mistake that allowed it to happen.

4

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago

by mickbobcat in

that rutherford or russell were into phrenology.

anyone have any info on this and is there anything in the tower or other publications going back about it?

thanks.

Anony Mous

@Earnest: The first two articles seem to suggest that phrenology is true, just that the scientific community came to the wrong conclusion, namely that it was "god" and religiosity you can read from the skull.

I don't think they have a position on for example multi-world hypothesis or quantum physics, but I'm sure you will eventually find something that says it is a fact and attributes it to Jehoober being superior. Just like they switched from being young-earth to old-earth creationists, they take whatever is convenient for them and twist it.

38

New Approach to Discussing Deity of Christ with JW's

by Sea Breeze in

5:27; 9:59; 18:22; jn.

9:48; [21:8]; 24:47; jn.

21:12, 17;] jn.

Anony Mous

The Western Bible canon alone has 2-3 narratives about the deity of Jesus. There were multiple branches of Christianity even early on (what Paul alluded to when he said there were followers of Barnabas, Peter and himself) that each had a different set of beliefs.

If we include all early Christian writings that were at one point claimed to be inspired, then you can create at least a dozen different outcomes, based on traditional Greek or Roman epics or even African origins or more Aristotelian ideas.

With the Bible, you can prove all different ideas by choosing the collection and order of scripture you use, hence the JWs are right (as they base their narrative similar to the Unitarian Protestant movement) whereas you can choose Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or Ethiopian Orthodox and get a different set of results.

51

PIMO elder

by Reservations in

jw
friends

i’m reservations, pimo elder.

i’m in no position to leave the organisation, maybe some people will see that as weak or whatever, but we have to all go down our own path in life.. i would like to be able to wake people up in my congregation, how do you think best to do this?

any ideas?.

Anony Mous

If you want to slow fade, the best method may be to give talks and drop truths. Just base it on the Bible, my last talk, right before I was appointed, a few people came up to me and said how encouraged they were (as far as I know they all left over time). I basically asked what Jesus would do about family members that were sinners and made my case that even if reprimanded, we should still be friendly and loving.

The congregation loved it. The elders wanted to have a talk with me about where I got my information, when you hit that point, the Bible defense is over and you are going to have a real conversation about who to believe, the Bible or the Watchtower.

I left soon after.

112

Afghanistan-Kabul falls to Taliban - U.S. Embassy staff evacuated by helicopter

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

in a scene reminiscent of the fall of saigon, the usa embassy staff have been evacuated by helicopter.. for a third time in asia ( a fourth, if you count usa supported chiang kai shek's defeat in mainland china) usa supported forces have been defeated.

more than 1 trillion dollars wasted and a huge deathtoll (both sides) afghanistan is back to where it started,.

will the taliban behave differently this time ?

Anony Mous

@GoUnion: the Chinese are involved all over Africa, including Muslim countries with the Belt and Road project. They don’t exert military power (yet) but as you see with the WHO, they get the right people in the right places and then squeeze when necessary. The whole reason the WHO blocked any investigation into China was because the current leadership is from a country that is basically a Chinese puppet.

They have learned greatly from the tactics and the mistakes that Stalin made after WW2 and they are using the same methods that made the USSR a world power without having anything (physically, militarily or economically) threatening.

They’ve gotten a great number of UN resolutions passed this way that benefit them, they are the ones that got through the idiotic Obama-era climate change accords which said they could emit whatever they want while the US would have to pay out huge sums of cash to the world.

The Chinese already promised cooperation with the Taliban and recognized them as the leaders of Afghanistan, they will funnel (slave) workers and infrastructure into the country that makes the Taliban a puppet for them in the next 10-20 years. They don’t think about election cycles and financial quarter winnings, Winnie the Pooh is elected for life, like Stalin.

There is trouble brewing in Ethiopia, Egypt and Somaliland over water and other resources, the Chinese have their fat finger right in the middle of it. Everywhere in Africa and Asia and given Biden Jr. has been picking bags of cash from them in the past decade, they have a great influence on our current administration.

34

Pfizer becomes first Covid vaccine to gain full FDA approval

by PaddyTheBaddy in

great news.. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58309254.

pfizer's two-dose covid-19 vaccine has received full approval from the us food and drug administration (fda) - the first jab to be licensed in the nation.. .

the vaccine had initially been given emergency use authorisation.

Anony Mous

Note the FDA approval is provisional, they have to agree to do a ton of studies which won’t complete until 2027. It was not approved for children under 16.

What it does allow now is for people to get compensated for injury, which is not available for current vaccines.

I am glad it was approved, the Trump-era fast track process worked. What is interesting is that others haven’t been authorized, nor did it authorize a third booster shot, which is what some are suggesting. I think it will be some time, I would cautiously suggest people should get the Pfizer vaccines.

24

Why wasn’t O’Donnell charged with receiving stolen goods.

by joe134cd in

firstly i appreciate the work mark o’donnell does for the xjw community.

no doubt this has also been discussed numerous times before.

but with regard to those documents that were illegally stolen in that vice documentary.

Anony Mous

You are referring to a court using materials or a third party making derivative works from such sources.

Both

The court may have an exemption to copyright to provide the entire work (or it may be reduced or redacted).

It cannot be reduced or redacted once submitted into evidence, there have been a variety of copyright lawsuits around that, and there is a fair use exemption for the portions of work that make it into a lawsuit. So you cannot sue the people submitting it or the court or the people requesting the case files. The judge typically will not allow an entire book to be submitted into evidence, only relevant portions, so it is very rare that you will find an entire copyrighted work in a case, often you'll only have pictures of it, they'll be modified or redacted before being allowed into evidence.

However, the sources themselves do not fall into the public domain and a third party can’t just re-publish the entire source (not a derivative work) and sell it

That's not what I said. The sources remain under the copyright of the owner, the case files fall under fair use. You can republish the entire case and derivatives of everything published in a lawsuit, that is what companies like LexisNexis do.

You can however, probably (not sure if there is case law about this) not sell the case files as being the book itself published by the author, that would be falsifying the brand/name, but that isn't a copyright issue. You can't sell other revisions of the book if they weren't published in the case. You can publish the "author vs. state" case and include all case files, if that happens to include an entire book, then that is fair use, because the judge thought it was relevant to the case to submit it into evidence, you can't redact it after the fact, as then you could redact pretty much anything people didn't want to be public, such as e-mails, letters etc nor could people learn what the relevant factors in the case were.

In the case of child porn for example, or the description of a murder you did yourself, those things aren't copyrightable or have any privacy attached, anything you create in the pursuit or progression of a crime is not protected by copyright or corporate secrecy or patent law or whatever else they may claim. This may be the case here, if the elders wrote down or recorded the proceedings of a meeting in which they colluded to commit and/or cover up a criminal act such as child molestation, there is no protection at all on those documents, it is in the best interest of the public for those documents to be revealed to the public.

21

What is the Jehovah’s Witness position on Unions and Labour action?

by hoser in

jw
friends

i remember you weren’t supposed to picket or be involved in labour unrest.

is this still the jw policy?.

Anony Mous

@rocketman: unions brought us Detroit, Chicago, artificial shortages, seniority based promotion and low pay for teachers, police and hospital staff.

As a result police, teachers and hospitals are low quality. It’s the same reason building contractors get a bad name for ripping people off, the reason plumbers have to charge exorbitant fees to the customer.

In all cases, private industry has done a lot better. The world has been asking for electric cars, they got killed off on behalf of unions several times in the 70s, in the 90s, Tesla doesn’t have them for a reason because all GM can do is produce the Bolt. Even foreign makers that have had full electric for nearly 20 years abroad, Nissan and Toyota refused to make full-electric, instead producing expensive hybrids with dual drivetrains for the US market. Because unions are afraid that simpler cars mean less jobs.

24

Why wasn’t O’Donnell charged with receiving stolen goods.

by joe134cd in

firstly i appreciate the work mark o’donnell does for the xjw community.

no doubt this has also been discussed numerous times before.

but with regard to those documents that were illegally stolen in that vice documentary.

Anony Mous

@Jeffro:

It is true that basic information, for example a list of numbers, can’t be copyrighted, but the way facts are presented can still be subject to copyright.

Only if the way that it is presented is in itself considerably transformative or has some creative input. That is indeed hairy to figure out, for example, a YouTube video presenting facts in an artful manner is typically copyrightable, but the facts themselves aren't, but if the judge/jury doesn't find your presentation to be sufficiently creative (eg. if anyone can make a similar looking video), then it may not be copyrightable. If it's just a print-out compilation on a piece of paper, facts and utilitarian language can't receive copyright protection.

It is not the case that descriptions of facts can’t be copyrighted.

Not sure what that even means in the legal context. There are facts (basically a list of things that happened) and then there is a narrative where someone gives opinion or commentary. The narrative/opinion MAY be copyrightable, the list of facts isn't.

Documents that become public record do not automatically fall into public domain, i.e., you can’t start selling copies of someone else’s copyrighted work just because the document was used in a court case.

Yes, you can. There are a number of cases about that. Using copyrightable material in a lawsuit is fair use. Requesting those legal documents for any reason, even if you want to sell the result, is also fair use and is required to be allowed by law. Hence why in these cases, the opposing parties typically object to publishing the entire thing into evidence (eg. a book), and the judge will typically only allow excerpts relevant to the case and seal the evidence. Unless, and this is the case where this was established, you describe a murder in a book, the judge allowed the entire book into evidence, and yes, that entire book is available.

There is also an entire argument going on in the courts as some courts are illegally establishing copyright on case files.

is claim about the Watch Tower Society not claiming copyright over the ‘elder’s manual’ is entirely false. Where the entire book has been copied, they have had it removed from sites. However they would have no case where a snippet of the book is used along with commentary, which is fair use. Publication information is explicitly stated in the book

I didn't realize this. Must be new, I know many manuals, back in the day, did not have any copyright. You can't find any publisher eg in the old blood and custody booklets they produced, the old elder's manual (I think these were published in the 70s and 80s) only had a publisher and no copyright notice (this was when copyright still had to be established by sending a copy into the LOC)

21

What is the Jehovah’s Witness position on Unions and Labour action?

by hoser in

jw
friends

i remember you weren’t supposed to picket or be involved in labour unrest.

is this still the jw policy?.

Anony Mous

As far as I know you cannot be part of a US-style labor union, as those are simply the (violent) enforcement arms of a (typically left-wing) political party. The main problem in US style labor unions, is that there is a requirement to vote and votes in those unions aren't protected by individual secrecy, so you cannot "spoil your vote" in a US labor union. The result is that a labor union will hold votes and ignore the result until it has the desired outcome.

I know you can join in other countries, but you cannot participate in the political processes either within the union or join political action such as picketing, although you don't have to show up to work if that action makes you unable to go to work (typically duties to 'sit out' on behalf of union leadership are spelled out in a union contract, so you have to adhere to your contract).