Anna

@BTK59 ( @George88 ) ( @BillyTheKid-55 ) ( @Allen Smith ) ( @AllenSmith35 ), etc., etc., etc., etc. --
and @Pudgy ( @James Thomas Rook Jr. ),
I once got in trouble from an Admin here for revealing that @TrueTomHarley was from Rochester, based on the assumption that I had used a moderator's ability to read I.P. addresses. I got out of trouble by showing that TTH had himself made posts claiming he was from Rochester.
It is considered very bad forum etiquette to reveal information or attempt to reveal personal information about a forum participant that isn't something they bring up about themselves. If it is specifically to reveal something negative, it is clearly malicious. Because it also goes against the rules of the forum, BTK59 and his cohorts might end up getting banned. I don't want to see BTK banned, for all the reasons I've stated before: 
Banning is meaningless on a forum like this one, because anyone can come back under a different name. Banning is a form of shunning, which can have serious and unintended psychological consequences. Banning can involve erasing all of a person's writing here, into which they may have put a lot of time and research. Banning a person who shows signs of maliciousness and viciousness and paranoia usually will motivate the person to come back only to seek vengeance on everyone they think was involved in their "excommunication" or "disfellowshipping" from the forum. In practice that has meant attacks on persons who were not even interested in the matter.  So, for these reasons, I recommend the following so that BTK and cohorts are not banned. I recommend that the posts related to the malicious attempt to expose personal legal issues and troubles be removed.
I will remove all related posts within 24 hours, unless both parties to this matter request that they remain. 

You suck, TrueTom.

Thank you, Dr. Adhominem. Coming from such a learned source as you, it means a lot. I pledge to always do my best.

A brilliant analysis, TrueTom. Absolutely spot-on! Of course, all of your posts are and I have come to expect no less of you.

I always take a topic I'm reading, and if I want to share something about a related subject, I just click on "Create a New Topic" from there. If it was about music, I'll make the new topic about music; if it was about JWs, I'll make it about JWs. I don't usually care what Club it's in, if any. I must have been reading a topic about JWs and just clicked "Create a New Topic" without looking at the Club.
When I saw that the topic was not in the JW Closed or JW Open "Club" I tried to move it in the same way I can move a post to another topic. The pulldown menu I get for moving it allows me to move it to the "JW Topics" or JWs Only Topics." [farther down on the list]
I picked "JW Topics" but it didn't move it to the "Club."
Anyway, I wanted it in the Open Club because I wanted George/BTK/etc to feel free to complain openly about it. (I have to admit, this was my actual thought and reason before moving it, because I had referenced him obliquely in the opening paragraph. He has made so many specific condemnations of against Fox News and Trump, for example.)
 

 
 

It doesn’t matter. No matter what the topic is or where it is, it always boils down to a squabble with George.

Lol, so true!
 
I always found it funny when we get articles about staying neutral, as if we must not get upset when governments do bad things.

We all know that ultimately all governments will be removed by Jesus,  but how should that stop us from voicing our opinion about certain current situations? It seems that the concern is that we don't get so involved, as to the point of taking sides, and forgetting Jesus's role in the future on the matter. But is that realistic? Would a Witness really do that? Forget? I know I wouldn't but perhaps some would? Then again with all the talk about Armageddon being just around the corner how could anyone forget?

Interestingly, the visiting branch Overseer that we just had at our assembly last weekend was going on about how bad all the governments are and that soon they will all be destroyed. My hubby whispered in my ear: "well that's going to endear us to them all" (he had in mind the situation in Norway in this instance). I thought maybe because this was just a small assembly there was no fear of a " little birdie" telling anyone how we can't wait for all the governments to be zapped. But then I started wondering how long will it be before some governments start getting irritated by that kind of talk? I mean isn't that what happened in Russia? We know Russia is no respecter of human rights and punish our people in a way Russians know best, but what about the more "civilized" nations that are becoming more and more "woke"?

I am thinking at this rate we may end up getting "attacked" first, before any other religions, lol. 

At the mid-week meeting we had the Bible reading that included Psalm 26. We also sang song #34.
It's a very beautiful melody, even though I have other favorites. What I like most about the song is that it follows the Psalm very closely. It's a good reminder that the words of the original Psalm 26 were also sung, even though we don't know the original melody. But the tune and music we use seem very appropriate for the tone of the Psalm itself. 
Last week, of course, we had this for the 23rd Psalm, too. And I think the same about that melody and how appropriate it is to the words of the Psalm. 

I think we can take Geo Jackson’s words as a template. ‘You don’t want to take sides,’ he says, and to show the challenge of keeping neutral, he uses the example of contesting politicians in Australia, one of whom wanted to draft people of Jackson’s age into the military and one of whom did not. Now that would test your resolve to stay neutral, he said, nonetheless you must do it.
If he was as ignorant of politics as some seem to think is the gold standard, he would not have even known which politician’s views would be to his benefit and which one would not. Of course, I leaned into him on this point, informing him that:
I’m sure he gave my words all the consideration they deserved before instantly turning his attention to other matters.

Well, whose fault is that? Next thing, you will be calling me a cult leader for having manipulated you into spilling it.
It is not shocking to be informed, though neither is it a sin to opt out. One firebrand brother on X stated emphatically, straight out of the blue, “Jehovah’s Witness are NOT INTERESTED in politics!” Well, actually some of them are, I told him. ‘I think what you are looking to say is that they do not take sides. 
‘They are NOT INTERESTED IN POLITICS!’ he roared back and then blocked me.

I always get confused when a Subaru comes up behind me because in my rear view mirror it says U R A BUS. 

It’s amazing how people like Joe Rogan have become better than most modern journalists. I’d listen to him more but his show is too long for me and I need a summary first.  I met Dr Peter McCullough in Tampa when he was staying directly across from my wife and I in our hotel room. My son and I talked to him in the lobby briefly. I am not quite as impressed with him now that he has tried some questionable methods to turn his own work into a money-making machine. But Rogan and McCullough were both very good sources about Covid. 

I am more and more impressed with Tucker on the majority of his current shows: Putin, covid, exposing the idiocy of Christian Zionist supporters, etc  He is going where no man with his popularity has gone before.
Alexander Mercurion is another example of the best news commentary on the Ukraine war but he is too detailed and will give a two hour program on the day's battles and predictions and comment on both sides of the news reports. You get a much better sense of who is doing more spinning and who is doing more straightforward reporting. It's useful, or at least interesting, but who can give 10 hours a week?
Scott Ritter does well with shorter summaries on shows with Danny Haiphong for example. But his own super-pro-Russian biases come through too often. 
There are a couple of excellent resources for Gaza-Israel reporting from people who have lived and worked in both Palestine and Israel. But people tend to defend the indefensible even if they are generally giving correct info. They try to read excuses into bad actions by Hamas. Scott Ritter does this too. 

He even says he drives a Subaru:

I’ve never heard a Tucker excerpt I didn’t like. That said, I haven’t heard too many. None of those other people do I know. In the early days of Covid, however, I forwarded a Joe Rogan interview with Dr. McCullough to HQ, hoping that if they found it as informative as I did, they would overlook Joe’s explosion of profanity towards the end. Probably, I put myself on their radar screen as much as you during your recent visit, during which they said to themselves,  “What is it this politician would like to tell?” Others: “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign deities.”

The conversation went like this:
ME: I'm just now seeing the new article on the front of jw.org, about whether Bible prophecy points to literal Israel. That seems to be on everyone's mind.
THEM: Absolutely. One of my studies just asked that question and I went through the usual scriptures, especially Galatians  6. I hadn't seen the article yet. I wish I had.
ME: Yes, the article uses Matthew 23:37 "your house is abandoned to you" and Galatians 6, and Romans 11.
THEM: I think I used Romans 11, too. 
ME: I just noticed that the article says one thing that might be confusing though. “A dulling of sensibilities has happened in part to Israel until the full number of people of the nations has come in, and in this manner all Israel will be saved.” (Romans 11:25, 26) . . . By the expression “all Israel,” Paul meant all of spiritual Israel.
ME: continuing . . . Actually, I don't think that will make sense to most people though. I mean, ultimately, yes, it's spiritual Israel that is saved. We know that from Galatians 6, but in this context people are going to notice that Paul actually was speaking about the two olive trees and the LITERAL Gentiles getting grafted into the tree representing LITERAL Israel. 
THEM: But it means all of spiritual Israel will be saved.
ME: That's the only way it works out in the long run, yes. But doesn't it make more sense that as many of literal Israel as possible get saved because it's these people of the nations who now have Jehovah's blessing, and this makes some of natural Israel jealous? And that helps lead to the salvation of as many natural Israelites as possible. (Romans 11:11)
etc., etc.
Who is right on this point is not important here, it's the next part of the conversation. Next post . . . 

Here was the general conversation, skipping a part where I had just explained how 30,000 Palestinians, largely women and children, had been killed, and the majority of major news outlets were still equivocating about whether Israel had gone too far. But when half-a-dozen mostly "white" aid workers were killed, suddenly Nancy Pelosi (friend of the aid organization founder), Joe Scarborough, Elizabeth Warren, and a bunch of others turn on a dime to stop giving Israel a free pass -- embarrassing their own man Biden. 
THEM: Well, anyway, we don't take sides about literal Israel, and we don't discuss political sides of who supports whom.
ME: But that last part is just information, even history.
THEM: History is one thing but the Bible says don't speak against the King. What's that it says in Ecclesiastes?
(Ecclesiastes 10:20) . . .Even in your thoughts, do not curse the king, and do not curse the rich in your bedroom; for a bird may convey the sound, or a creature with wings may repeat what was said.
ME: Yeah. That's where we get the expression: "a little birdie told me." Basically, it means that someone on Twitter will turn you in. Or all the government agencies will be listening in on Twitter.  
THEM: Very funny. You mean "X."
ME: Yeah, but they still call them "tweets."
THEM: But still we don't take sides, we don't even say anything against any ruler, whether he's good or bad. We only pray that they make decisions that are good for us. 
ME: I don't think it's wrong to say something against a ruler. Don't you think Hitler was a bad ruler?
THEM: But he's not a king now is he? He's dead.
ME: I mean even when he was alive.
THEM: Well, of course, because he was attacking Jehovah's people.
ME: But it would have been wrong to say he was bad while he was attacking millions of Jews?
THEM: [changing subject] But look how respectful Paul was talking to Felix, he never said a word against him.
ME: Maybe not, but Luke tells us he was probably looking for a bribe. That's pretty negative.
ME: continuing . . . And Jesus called Herod a fox.
THEM: Well maybe he was "foxy" -- "crafty" not always a bad thing.
ME: You don't believe that . . . and even if it was a good thing, then Jesus was taking sides.
THEM: Anyway . . . it's wrong.

My overall point is that most Witnesses I know in the United States are very political and don't even know it. Often much more political than their neighbors who vote. There are certain limits to what we will say about our political views, but I think we don't recognize that those political views often come out inadvertently in other ways.
In fact, I've seen strong political views among Witnesses who only use the line "we don't take sides in politics" when they wish to shut down an argument they disagree with.
My parents and many relatives were of the type that said they wouldn't be fooled by all the lies and exaggerations from MS-NBC supposedly on the "progressive left." Nor the lies and exaggerations from FOX News on the supposedly "conservative right." But that didn't stop them from being fooled by thinking that CNN was not mostly "state-sponsored media" that would cherry-pick stories now and then to keep up the ruse that they weren't. As long as they continued to support corporate sponsors, including "Big Pharma" and "Big Military Industrial Complex," it was clear what side they were going to take. And although Trump was golden to all networks for his ability to spout controversy, one of his biggest sins for CNN was the fact that he went 4 years without getting the USA involved in any new wars. 
We were watching CNN once, not on purpose, and although many segments were introduced with "Brought to you by Pfizer" one was introduced "Brought to you by McDonnell-Douglas." As if any of us watching were about to go out and buy McDonnell-Douglas fighter jets and missiles for accessories. Of course, even the segments brought to you by Pfizer weren't really for any of us to be swayed in our pharmacy choices, either. As with all corporate media, those ads are really just payments to CNN; they are all just a way for corporations to PAY (bribe) the news writers and commentators to realize on which side their bread is buttered. They are merely buying influence.
----
All this was probably just my own rationale to excuse my own tendency to throw in opinions about politics, politicians, and the mainstream corporate media. There are no easy answers to how someone should go about getting their news, or how to feed their own opinions. But I would be happy to hear about the various sources people use when trying to find the "truth" about various world events. 

You could be wrong, but if possible, I think we would like to rewrite some of our history...

The last time I was here, they were more ambiguous about taking pictures and sharing them with friends, so I literally took a picture of just about everything and I even posted a set of pictures here. But this time they give stricter unambiguous instructions about the personal and family use of pictures taken, even when you can take a still picture vs a video. And the instruction is now explicitly that they cannot be shared on any social media platform. Sorry.
The 4 "museums" at Warwick are still about the same as before. With a few updates and a few older things cut out. The Bible museum is still the best. Probably the best of its kind anywhere. There is a separate segment on the use of the Divine Name in Bible translations, and it's very good.
There are several bits of interactive equipment that were working perfectly in 2018 and 2019 but are now giving trouble. For example, touchscreens that take your input about all kinds of things, such as whether you have worked on a WTS construction project, or which book you studied in preparation for baptism [e.g., Let God Be True, What Does the Bible Really Teach, Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, Paradise ...Regained, etc.] and then it gives statistics on many of these things for everyone to see. [e.g. 68% of all visitors this week have worked on a WTS construction project, etc.]
One thing that bothered me a bit was the reduction of material in a special "Watchtower History" museum that had a lot of pre-1919 information about the persecution mostly starting with the 1917 Finished Mystery book. They changed the name and now start it mostly in 1919. And then cut out a large percentage of interesting stuff. 
Also, they have the big wall-sized "Chart of the Ages" in one of the rooms highlighting Russell's early work. And another wall-sized chart called "Bible Chronology" that Russell's early followers also used in their meeting places. Those charts have the dates on them -- even if some of those dates appear to be embarrassing today.
But now there is a new "Chart of the Ages" I have never seen before in the Patterson museum on a similar historical subject but it seems like the dates have been removed. The chart is still titled "CHART OF THE AGES" and the museum label below it says:
How was the training provided [in Russell's time]? The "Chart of the Ages" was used as the primary basis for practice talks. 
It's evidently a wall sized blow-up of a page from one of the publications, because it still has the pictures of the pyramids on it, but on the chart itself, in says in fine print (on the side):
"For Explanation see The Plan of the Ages published by Bible and Tract Soc'y, Brooklyn N.Y."
Also odd that they left out the word "Watchtower," just Bible and Tract Society. I could be wrong, but it looks like it was edited to remove the embarrassing dates that are on the large one at Warwick.
If I remember, I'll look it up unless someone here already knows if there was a "generic" chart of the ages. 

Please, remember to ask him!

I’ll say! Those jerks who stoned Stephen turned their firepower on me! I barely made it back to the car in one piece.

lol. Why do you think I’m attracting attention to this forum through their internet network right after making a donation?

About two more weeks and the lake will be gorgeous with greenery all around again. The second picture is my old IBM stomping grounds. The third is back in the far corner of the lobby where my attempts at hacking are out of the limelight. 

The brothers and sisters who have their part in the Bible village museum try to stay in character as if they are in a convention drama even if you ask them a question. They don’t have to of course but some of them have fun with it. One sister doing basket weaving and dyeing yarn for a loom asked me where I was from. I told her New York via California and Missouri and she wasn’t sure if she had heard of such far away places. 

Speaking of security. It’s much tighter than it was in 2019 when I was here last. There is the iron gate out front and the brother has to make a phone call with your name and appointment confirmation # to another person inside before they open it. Then you must stop for an attendant who asks you for the info again. Then a parking attendant. Then a brother at the main lobby door who only lets you in with a card key. 
I was just in Patterson to see the Bible Village “Museum” tour. It was excellent but too short. They also have a “legally establishing the good news” tour/museum and a Gilead school historical tour which now covers the other schools more extensively than before. 
 
I am back in Warwick now. Got here a bit early so I’m looking out on the lake. Very nice. I’ve worked while looking out on this lake before. But for IBM and not the WTS. IBM is at the other end of the lake. We used to handle our disaster recovery setup with them and I was sent here twice for my secular work. 

This person, Dickson Agedah, keeps switching back and forth between Watchtower chronology and the astronomically evidenced chronology, as if both were right. I have no idea if the person is just mixing up references to Watchtower publications, or has been a Witness in the past.
In the case of Pekka Mansikka, I know what's going on because of private communications I won't reveal. But he sent me his books and I did start a long topic here once showing how Mansikka was so desperate to add 20 years to the Neo-Babylonian timeline. He first added the 20 years to Nabonidus' reign, so that it ended in a 37th year when Cyrus overthrew him instead of the 17th year. When this was shown to be impossible, even by the Watchtower's accepted evidence, he revised his book(s) to say that there was another unknown Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned for 20 years after Evil-Merodach.  
As far as I can tell so far, the differences between the Watchtower chronology and the standard "astronomically evidenced" chronology is shown in the following chart: