@Riley: so what is the off-ramp then, because Russia has expended very little in this war, whereas Ukraine has had a significant portion of its men leave or die. Russia has entrenched itself in the area it wanted to take. The rest of your information is likewise a very simplistic way of looking at the problem, the NATO argument is bullshit, but so is the argument that Putin just wants more land, the land of Ukraine is relatively poor (productively economically speaking) if it weren’t for the West, as you correctly said, pouring in tons of resources. Now that Europe is effectively bankrupt, what will happen in say 5, 10 and 25 years? 2.5 years was just half the on-ramp to the last world wars, Germany stopped adhering to the Treaty of Versailles and the Dawes plan was the West showing weakness in 1926, by the early 1930s Germany started practically re-arming, it was nearly a decade before WW2 set in. There are a lot of parallels here, the West showing itself weak and letting tinpot dictators take over in Eastern Europe and Germany.
Anony Mous
JoinedPosts by Anony Mous
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37
NO SUPPORT FOR EXJWS DRAFTED IN UKRAINE
by raymond frantz inhttps://youtu.be/ulan2hhagz8?si=jpedzunzb5o_6axd.
here’s a cautionary tale for anyone counting on past ties with jehovah’s witnesses to dodge conscription: they’ll throw you under the bus faster than you can say “conscientious objector.” a man in ukraine learned this the hard way after refusing military service and hoping his old religious connections would save him.
spoiler alert—they didn’t.
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NO SUPPORT FOR EXJWS DRAFTED IN UKRAINE
by raymond frantz inhttps://youtu.be/ulan2hhagz8?si=jpedzunzb5o_6axd.
here’s a cautionary tale for anyone counting on past ties with jehovah’s witnesses to dodge conscription: they’ll throw you under the bus faster than you can say “conscientious objector.” a man in ukraine learned this the hard way after refusing military service and hoping his old religious connections would save him.
spoiler alert—they didn’t.
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Anony Mous
The situation in Ukraine is a bit more complicated, as the Russians were merely interested in annexing pieces that Lenin and Stalin destroyed and turned into Russia by eradication and systematic replacement of the population. Those same places were forced away into Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia etc by the Clinton administration in the wake of the Soviet Union collapsing despite the fact they had no cultural ties to their ‘home country’. Had the people had a true election on the matters, we would’ve seen a bufferzone of places like Transnistria, Donbas etc.
Ukraine’s leadership is interested in the gas and oil and will (as it has recently shown) use western firepower it receives to even invade Russia proper, the response to the Donbas becoming ‘less dependent’ as people may not remember was bombing civil targets (terrorism) in Moscow, likewise with the other regions, you have (often Islamic) factions bombing Russian targets whenever they feel slighted, similar to Hamas attacking Israel whenever they want something.
This is then complicated by the fact that Biden allowed Putin to not only evade Ukraine security (Nordstream 2 in particular) but then also said that if they just invaded a little bit, he wouldn’t have a problem with it. That and the fact that Biden’s family has ties to corrupt Ukraine and Russian oligarchs that are currently profiteering from the European energy crises.
As far as the topic, Ukraine doesn’t recognize JWs or most religious groups or freedoms. Not sure if the WTBTS would have intervened, they likely would have been banned completely which would be an optics problem to the far left media. Should they have, potentially if they are true to their claimed standards, but the current iteration of leadership seems more worried about their ESG score with their Blackrock investment partners (see also COVID) than their followers.
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Jehovah’s Witnesses or Jesus Witnesses?
by Vanderhoven7 inkeith writes.
you have just touched on a flawed doctrinal belief that is foundational to false religion.. first, it is important to understand what false religion means when they call themselves jehovah’s witnesses.
by this, they declare themselves to be “witnesses of the father” despite the fact that jehovah is not the name of god at all, but a concoction of human origin from the dark ages.. here is the flaw:.
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Anony Mous
@Raimundo: various issues with that particular text - the translation is not that the Israelites were witnesses to God as if he needed a witness to prove his existence, but the other way around, they served as witnesses (evidence or proof) of the power of God.
The same word was used in Genesis when Laban and Jacob made a covenant: Come now, let’s make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between us. The word is exclusively used in this context of something standing as a witness of a covenant. When something needs heralding or announcing which is the context the JWs use the word, different Hebrew words are used generally what we translate into the word prophecy, which is also related to teacher, the Bible also clearly says that not everyone in Israel was supposed to be a prophet/teacher, even in the Bible, very few are pointed out and always by direct intervention and there were severe consequences for assuming that role.
The word in the Greek texts to be used to announce/witness about Christ are similar to the word prophecy, not standing as proof.
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Questions about demons, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Charlotte murder trial. The Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer.
by Balaamsass2 in8/20/24 "the charlotte (nc) observer".
questions about demons, jehovah’s witnesses in charlotte murder trial.
what do you think about demonic possessions?
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Anony Mous
@joey: this isn’t schizophrenia this is an entire family of hardcore believers and that is exactly what hardcore believers actually believe, they can’t be doing that as baptized Witlesses, must be demons. It is pure cognitive dissonance, everyone is perfect if they just pray hard enough.
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Lost aoul
by LostSoulUK inhi everyone, i just joined and i have been lost a long time, growing up i was a witness with my mum.
i walked away when i was older, did drugs, sex, travelling all my life never stopping anywhere more than 3 months my entire life, relationship after relationship, pain and hurt after pain and hurt.
i always felt like there was something missing, and tried to find what it was.
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The Watchtower Society Hedge Fund
by TJ Curioso inthe watchtower society hedge fundseveral weeks ago it came to my attention via the e-jehovahs-witnesses discussion board that the watchtower society had devised a new money raising scheme.
the scheme is to beg and borrow money from each individual congregation account, which they deem to be in excess of the congregation's actual expenses.
i half jokingly responded to the topic then that the watchtower has become a hedge fund.
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Anony Mous
May not be ‘really’ sold but rather sold to different shell corporations for reporting purposes, Any lawsuits around that time that may have caused them to ‘sell off’ below market value?
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Voting, why make it easier to vote??
by moomanchu indemocrats are always harping on and on about voting rights and how the ability to vote should be easier and access unrestricted.
the most progressive ones want to allow prisoners, and illegals with no voter id the ability to vote along with the criminals, drug addicts, and uneducated low lives who already can vote.. .
after they push for everyone and anyone to be able to vote they then tell us it is a sacred privilege, a duty and honor, and a big responsibility blah, blah ect..... if it is all those grandiose things are true i think it should be harder to vote not easier.
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Anony Mous
Only land owners should be allowed to vote, that is the way it was intended for the exact reason that you can promise everyone else handouts on the backs of people you can extract the handouts from. If you own no land/house/property you have no incentives to think about your vote.
As far as the registration to vote vs gun ownership, you have the right to defend yourself especially if an elected government is oppressive. So you need the guns in order to defend your right to vote even if it were the the government institutes inane requirements such as having a valid ID for guns but not for voting.
Self-defense is a natural right, governments are not even necessary for the functioning of society.
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Covering up bathroom mirrors at the assemblies!!!
by nojudgement inthis was one of the craziest things i remember about the summer conventions.
i would go into the sister's bathrooms and the mirrors would all be taped up with brown paper so that we couldn't look at our reflections.
were were amish or something?
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Anony Mous
The queue time reason is indeed correct. Where I was we used a facility which did have parity on the number of bathrooms but women do take longer and make a much bigger mess too so half the male bathrooms were used for females and it still had hour-long queues whereas males had lot smaller queues.
The problem with queues is basic math, for when you double the load you have exponential growth in the queue length over time (more people join for every time unit than can go through in that time unit). People artificially adapt their behavior too, so opening more bathrooms actually grows the queue sizes, because if they appear shorter, you are more likely to join them.
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The Question of the "Great Apostasy" and the Historical Continuity of Christianity
by aqwsed12345 in1. the continuity and visibility of the church.
the true church must be continuous from the apostolic age.
there is no room in christianity for a "gap" or interruption of thousands of years during which true christianity ceased to exist and then was revived in the form of another movement.
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Anony Mous
@aqswed: I was talking about documented papal succession and transfer of power/appointments from bishop to bishop, the documents go back far but cannot be definitively established although yes, the Roman Catholic Church can trace documented existence, there are other churches (eg Ethiopian) claim the same that have slightly stronger extant evidence although also not unbroken.
As far as the Russelite movement vs Jehovah’s Witness claim to apostolic succession, the question was what signature would allow us to trace it in history. JWs cannot establish any teaching that would make it unique enough to be traced, would there be a sect that held the end to come in 1914, rejected the cross and divinity of Christ, that would be a signature. I’m looking for a small group like the Freemasons, Knights Templar or others that have sporadically popped up in history and align with modern JW teachings. Russell himself held to the Christian faith and the first and second schism has existing groups that still hold to the cross and the divinity of Christ, the third schism has a number of JW-like groups that also reject the divinity of Christ and the cross. So JWs need, if they want to claim apostolic succession to trace their lineage, first of all reject Russell as they did his teachings. Then we can find others (Mormons etc) that would likewise be JW-adjacent over time, but you can’t go much further than early 1800s.
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The Question of the "Great Apostasy" and the Historical Continuity of Christianity
by aqwsed12345 in1. the continuity and visibility of the church.
the true church must be continuous from the apostolic age.
there is no room in christianity for a "gap" or interruption of thousands of years during which true christianity ceased to exist and then was revived in the form of another movement.
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Anony Mous
I don’t think you can prove papal successions historically speaking beyond the early 9th or 10th century, the historical record for that is simply lost although you can prove the Catholic Church existed very early on (St. Ignacius - 110AD) which was writing to the congregation in Smyrna, the same referenced around the same time by Paul and John of Patmos.
I agree with most of your claims although you must clarify what would make for a JW signature teaching in its own historic record. We all know the cross, trinity and other staple Christian teachings were commonly discussed by writers in the first Zion’s Watch Tower and its predecessor publications which JWs claim were their start, yes they eventually rejected those, but they didn’t come out of the gate with them. Russell clearly states that Jesus should be worshipped, not doing so would have made him a heretic in both the Millerite and Presbyterian movements, Presbyterians believe in the Catholic Church although they believe the Roman Catholic Church was corrupted. Although we know the Russelite movement went through its own schisms, only one branch resolving into WTBTS/JW, JW themselves would not admit to the true establishment being by Rutherford after another schism.
So in short, what is the signature teaching of JWs that would be taught by Russell and accepted by modern JW - because there are not many if any teachings that currently overlap and have remained constant.