Posts by Nathan Natas

10

personal experience

by gilwarrior in

hello this is gilwarrior.

i was a jehovah's witness for over 20 years.

i got out about six months ago and i am having the best time of my life.

Nathan Natas

Welcome, Gil. You are off to a good start - keep busy with whatever thing interests you, and excel at it. You've got plenty of time to "catch up" and get your life back. Enjoy it!

Best wishes!

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Nathan Knorr ignored me.

by refiners fire in

jw
friends

i once saw princess diana.

it was in a nunawading street when her and charlie came here in 83 after the bushfires.

i was stood in the middle of a roundabout, away from the crowds, and she looked into my eyes, smiled and waved.

Nathan Knorr ignored me.

by refiners fire in

jw
friends

i once saw princess diana.

it was in a nunawading street when her and charlie came here in 83 after the bushfires.

i was stood in the middle of a roundabout, away from the crowds, and she looked into my eyes, smiled and waved.

Refiner'sFire - please accept my long-delayed apologies for my behavior during the brief time I was manifest in the flesh. I hope you will set this offense behind you so that we can become good buddies. In fact, if you go fishing sometime, I'll come along - in spirit, of course.

Farkel - I think you'll agree that now, post-mortem and granted my reward, my personality is much improved. I just can't believe how friggin' DARK ot is here! Jeezus!

yes, i was an asshole, but that's behind me now. in fact it was always behind me, wasn't it?

9

Seattle Rain Part 1

by TMS in

jw
friends

mulan mentioned the rain in seattle in the thread entitled rain, rain, rain.

nathan natas, the dead ringer for brother knorr, explained that new york gets more inches of precipitation.

billy goat alluded to light deprivation as a contributor to depression.

Nathan Natas

Thanks, TMS; that was a pleasant reminiscence.

Let the record show that today, the day following Mulan's complaint to the heavenly authorities in charge of precipitation, the sky in Seattle was clear and sunny. A very very pleasant winter (if I may be allowed to call 40 degrees winter) day.

You must have connections, Mulan!

36

Questions about Athletic Activities while a JW

by AjaxMan in

jw
friends

hi, everyone.. on my researches about the jdubs.

i read that they are restricted or forbidden from engaging in activities such as sports, working out in a gym or in martial arts.. i, who does all three, have a question for the members of this forum:.

when you were a jw, could you do any of the three activities mentioned?.

Nathan Natas

Hi Ajax -

Choices a person makes are between him and the jehovah sock puppet operated by the WTS thru the local elders and local petty gossipmongers.

15

Sooty and Jehovah

by Duncan in

jw
friends

a couple of years ago we took our youngest to see sooty.

anyone from the uk will instantly know who i mean sooty is a little glove-puppet bear (?

) who never speaks but has managed to turn himself, over the last 50 years or so, into a british national institution.. sooty has a couple of friends sweep the dog (always my favourite) and soo and various others who appear in his show.

Nathan Natas

You are SO right on, Duncan!

Is a glove-puppet the same as what we in the USA call a 'sock-puppet" (it is literally made from a sock -usually a white athletic sock)?

I put the Pets.com sock puppet before all jehovah sock puppets.

*

By the way, now that his career at Pets.com has hit the skids, my hero has decided to continue his education: http://www.mbaapplicant.com/pets.htm

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Questions about Athletic Activities while a JW

by AjaxMan in

jw
friends

hi, everyone.. on my researches about the jdubs.

i read that they are restricted or forbidden from engaging in activities such as sports, working out in a gym or in martial arts.. i, who does all three, have a question for the members of this forum:.

when you were a jw, could you do any of the three activities mentioned?.

Nathan Natas

From my 20+ years experience, I can tell you that the watchtower certainly discourages these activities, especially if they would be done in association with "worldly people" as in school after-hours athletic pursuits or commercial training facilities. They'd (the WTS) probably come down hardest on martial arts, believing that such training is "preparation for war." I think that at one time a watchtower publication actually said that self-defense was an innate knowledge and did not have to be learned or practiced.

(Hypocrasy, when you learn that the WTS officers have BODYGUARDS!)

Now, in actual application, the rules flex tremendously depending on local conditions - and "local" can be down to the level of who your parents are. I knew some guys who were in my age group growing up as JWs who were both fairly athletic, practiced judo, and served in their restricted-entry high schools as hall monitors, engaging in all the juvenile conflicts that come with that territory. It was OK for them - both Mom and Dad were Dubs with "rank" in the congregation, and they could do no wrong. Don't get me wrong - these were both good guys, and I envied them for the freedom they enjoyed that was denied me.

I think that in dub-dom, if you ignore their little rules long enough to become GOOD at whatever it is you shouldn't be spending time on, you get a free pass - a nod and a wink and let's move on.

So, in my experience, formal practice of martial arts was out of the question. If you went to the beach and engaged in some romping with the guys, well, that's just horseplay, right? Working out with weights was likewise discouraged - "bodily trainng is beneficial for a little, but godly devotion... blahblahblah." Usually if you started to workout you would begin to hear negative comments. Still, there were exceptions. It was OK for someone in the circuit to donate an Olympic weight set for the use of the bethelite who were assigned to live at the assembly hall. The guys who availed themselves of this opportunity got pretty big pretty fast - ah, but they were of a different caste than mere publishers.

School sports, as i said, were discouraged because of the 'bad associations" they would involve.

By the way, Chess was practice for war also - strategy, you know.

In one way, these restrictions serve a useful purpose - they get the kids to abandon the religion early on.

Johnnie Taliban

by Nathan Natas in

jw
friends

when johnny comes slinking home.

frontpagemagazine.com| december 13, 2001 .

after reginald left, i thought.

Nathan Natas

When Johnny Comes Slinking Home
FrontPageMagazine.com| December 13, 2001
By Ann Coulter

WE CAN ONLY HOPE the government will deal with California Talibanist John Walker as harshly as it did with Elian Gonzalez.

Encouraged by his indulgent liberal boomer parents to find his own spiritual path, Walker responded predictably – and quickly became a walking left-wing cliché. The one spiritual path it is absolutely positively certain Walker could never have chosen is one founded in Scripture.

In his hometown of Fairfax, Calif., the conventional spiritual paths include Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Sufism, Rastafarianism, Native American spirituality and voodoo. But according to the Boston Globe, "only 12 percent of residents attend traditional churches or synagogues."

Walker's mother left Christianity to become a Buddhist. At his "alternative" school, Walker was steeped in Native American spirituality. He was named after John Lennon. If there were a goofy cult that prescribed eating your own excrement, liberals would ponder its deeper meaning and treat it with respect. The only thing John Walker could have done to shock the neighbors would have been to take off and follow Bob Jones.

Alas, Walker was no nonconformist. It was The Autobiography of Malcolm X that shook him to the core at age 16, persuading him to become a Muslim.

Has anyone read The Autobiography of Malcolm X? Here's a passage in which Mr. X describes his own education in Islam, as taught by his brother Reginald, whose "approach was so effective":

"The white man is the devil."

He told me that all whites knew they were devils -- "especially Masons."

I said, "Without any exception?"

"Without any exception."

"What about Hymie?"

"What is it if I let you make 500 dollars to let me make 10,000?"

After Reginald left, I thought. I thought. Thought.

Yes, that is something to think about. (I always knew there was something funny about those Masons.) This was the turning point in Walker's spiritual journey.

He became a Muslim and ended up fighting with the Taliban against America. (Maybe this conflict does have something to do with Islam.) While studying at an Islamic school in Pakistan, he said he met "many people connected with the Taliban" and his "heart became attached to that." The Taliban may execute people for sport, blow up thousand-year-old Buddhist statues, treat women like goats (and vice versa) – but at least they aren't sneaky Luciferian Masons!

With the deep grounding he found in Islam, Walker couldn't even settle on a name for himself. He called himself variously "Sulayman Al-Lindh," "Sulayman Faris" and – his nom de jihad – "Abdul Hamid." (So it's not quite accurate to say – as various news outlets do – that he "goes by his mother's last name." He goes by a lot of names, none of them "Walker.")

Now there's the question of what to do with this perfect fruition of phony left-wing non-judgmentalism.

Since the government that stole Abdul's heart is not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, he could be shot. But the government he was fighting against is too nice to do that. America abides by the Geneva Convention even in conflicts with belligerents who do not. (It comes with the territory of being the Great Satan.) Consequently, if Abdul is treated simply as a POW, he is entitled to be repatriated when the war is over.

He could also be tried for treason. As defined in the Constitution, treason consists of "levying war against" the United States, "adhering" to America's enemies or giving them "aid and comfort." Taking up arms against the United States on the side of the Taliban is, as the movie title says, "as good as it gets."

Though the Constitution requires only "two witnesses to the same overt act" for a treason conviction, thanks to the miracle of television, there are millions of witnesses to Abdul's treason.

Indeed, it appears that Abdul's only defense to treason – apart from the Ezra Pound insanity defense – is to claim that he has already renounced his U.S. citizenship. He has certainly committed one of the predicate acts for a loss of citizenship under federal law by "entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state ... engaged in hostilities against the United States." The law also requires him to prove, however, that he did so "with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality." There is scant evidence for that.

The only downside to a trial in the United States is that it would be a trial in the United States. It's interesting that wide swaths of the public instantly warm to the idea of any proceeding for suspected terrorists and traitors – other than a criminal trial. All you have to do is invoke the name "O.J."

A win-win solution might be to turn Abdul over to the justice system of the natives. Abdul was a prisoner during the uprising in which CIA agent Michael Spann was killed. Having laid down their arms, the mutinous prisoners are not protected under the Geneva Convention. If Abdul participated in the uprising, he may have violated Afghan criminal law.

The new Afghan government is likely not to be so punctilious about evidence and procedure as the Great Satan is. But at least Abdul could rest assured that there would be absolutely no Masons on the jury.

21

Rain, rain, rain

by Mulan in

jw
friends

it is raining here today, big time.

i had to go out for a few errands and it was so miserable.

the puddles are freaking lakes.

Nathan Natas

Splish splash greetings from Hydopolis!

New York City actually gets more rain annually than Seattle does, but in Seattle it takes its time coming down. Lots and lots of gray drizzly days.

Monsoons only occasionally.

If you're planning a trip to Seattle, late August / early September are the ideal times. Absolutely gorgeous weather - the air is clear and all the mountains are out.

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