TrueTomHarley

Huh! All that you have to do here to establish your reputation as Teller of TRUTH is to disappear!
If I wasn’t worried about breaking the heart of the old hen, I’d do it myself!
”Ah, TrueTom,” they will say. “He really was true! But we didn’t realize it until he was long gone! If only we had recognized his genius and integrity while he was with us!”

that old hen
You’re such a loon, 4J. You’ve been told any number of times just who runs things here—it is entirely unremarkable—and you choose instead some paranoid and zany version.

It’s a little too late to be concerned about that.
If it doesn’t, will you finally get it through your thick and paranoid head that I have no power here?

My wife’s grandfather was born in Zagreb. My son went to Serbia to “find his roots.” He fell in love with the people, and eventually moved there. “You have to be careful in accepting their hospitality,” he says, “becasue they will give you what they don’t have.” He also confirms what you have said about Tito.

It is as I wrote in the introduction to Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia:
[The Witness faith is “not the only minority faith to experience persecution in Russia. All of them do to some extent. Witnesses are in the vanguard – the first to have their organization outlawed, but many are shaking in their boots that they will be next.“
They are still shaking three years later. Many faiths in Russia experience “problems.” Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses have suffered their organization declared illegal, which vastly compounds the nature of their “problems.”

that old hen.

My wife’s grandfather was born in Zagreb. My son went to Serbia to “find his roots.” He fell in love with the people, and eventually moved there. “You have to be careful in accepting their hospitality,” he says, “becasue they will give you what they don’t have.” He also confirms what you have said about Tito.

“They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work” Is the expression I have heard of the Soviet Union.

My wife’s grandfather was born in Zagreb. My son went to Serbia to “find his roots.” He fell in love with the people, and eventually moved there. “You have to be careful in accepting their hospitality,” he says, “becasue they will give you what they don’t have.” He also confirms what you have said about Tito.

In communist YU under Tito (the "best" communism of all types that was mentioned here :)), there was saying: You can not pay me so little, how little work I can do

One fine resurrection day: “Hey! TrueTomHarley! Glad to see you made it. I had my doubts.”
“Thanks, brothers. Great to be alive! Now, lead me to my keyboard so I can tell off the fatheads!”
“Um...hate to break it to ya, fella...

When I heard the truncated clip, I was disappointed. It makes our guy look like a religious nut. “It’s a modern-day miracle,” he says, seemingly his lead-off line about the Jehovah’s Witnesses move to present their annual summer conventions online.
It’s not a modern-day miracle. It’s a technological accomplishment—an impressive one, to be sure—after all, it involves 500 languages, done on a crash basis, and broadcast worldwide—but it is not a “miracle.” It is not Jesus walking on water. Forgive me if I admit that when I first saw the clip with that as his lead statement, I supposed that the man was a nut—an over enthusiastic zealot who had drunk too much of his own Kool-Aid.
Yet, do I not come across the entire interview several days later to find it of a completely different flavor? It turns out that he is not that way at all—his remarks were framed to make him sound a fanatic by a media that feels it their duty to do so when dealing with matters of faith, something that is not their forte. He never meant the “miracle” remark literally. It’s a gush of enthusiasm such as anyone will have upon completing an overwhelming project. It is Neil Armstrong saying “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It is a throw-off line of hyperbole that comes 5 minutes into the interview—not the lead-off pronouncement of the truncated version.
This is so infuriating, but also so typical. Everyone will say something in the course of 15 minutes that can be misconstrued by those of another agenda—who simply can’t get their heads around a different point of view or may even be trying to deliberately sabotage it—to make the person look like a nut.
I almost wonder if something similar is now at work with the doctor from Cameroon recommending the hydroxychloroquine drug for Covid 19. There were ten doctors who banded together for a public statement before the steps of the Supreme Court, but because this one (Stella Immanuel) has made remarks in her past about demons, and the others presumably have not, she becomes the sole media focus to discredit the lot of them. The other nine are sent out to pasture.
I don’t often speak on my blog of demons, nor of the devil. Much of my target audience chokes at mention of God, so should I really send them into orbit with posts of the devil? Besides, humans are perfectly capable of doing evil things all on their own—a line of demarcation is hard to draw. 
But neither do I think someone should be pilloried for bringing up the topic, much less when it has nothing to do with the story at hand. If anything, I am the expedient chicken, not her. Anyone who knows anything about Africa knows that belief in interaction with the spirits is well-nigh universal. She is to be expected not to pick up on it? Let the thinkers today get a handle on evil—even eradicate it a little bit—before they go ridiculing those who go off their materialistic script.
At root, though the doctor and our guy may be poles apart, the reason to trash them is the same, or at least it is a kissing cousin: they are both serious about things not endorsed by today’s prevailing atheistic materialistic view. In her case, there may be more to the story—something that is deliberately discredited. In our case, there certainly is. Us first:
Robert Hendricks, spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses, speaks of how both the door-to-door ministry and the annual conventions have been suspended for the first time in history. The reasons are telling—that of “respect for life” and “love of neighbor.” Probably no one has more potential to spread the Covid 19 virus than Jehovah’s Witnesses in their old model. Not only do they routinely approach people, but their organization is the largest convention-holding one in the world—people converge sometimes by the tens of thousands for events held in stadiums. We just couldn’t see ourselves doing that this year, Hendricks said. With a lead-in time of only about a month, Witnesses put the entire event online to be streamed worldwide. 
Their organization had gone into lockdown even before governments began to require it. “Just because you can drive 75 mph in some areas doesn’t mean that you should,” he stated. I told the CultExpert, he of the #freedomofmind hashtag, that “our” people were more responsible than his. Our people promptly and without fuss laid low—Covid 19 would be long gone by now if all were like them—but “his” people? You don’t think many of them will use their “freedom of mind” to tell the government what it can do with its rules? 
Frankly, since media jumps all over churches that defy “science” by gathering, you would think they would praise to the heavens one that has set the example for being proactive. Yet, even when trying to compliment, they are hamstrung by a mindset that pronounces religion outmoded. Even as the New York Times covers the socially responsible move, (that of suspending the door-to-door ministry, not that of the conventions, which came later), they take for granted that it is done only for the sake of appearances. “It followed anguished discussions at Watchtower headquarters with leaders deciding March 20 that knocking on doors would leave the impression that members were disregarding the safety of those they hoped to convert,” as though the safety itself doesn’t mean beans to them. “Members are called on to share scriptures in person with nonmembers,” it wrote. Well, in fact they are called to do it, but it is by the scriptures themselves, and not the commands of HQ, as they seem to frame it. “Now if I am declaring the good news, it is no reason for me to boast, for necessity is laid upon me. Really, woe to me if I do not declare the good news!” writes the apostle at 1 Corinthians 9:16. Why do these materialistic ones not just say that the Bible itself is a cult manual and be done with it?
As to the 500 languages (1000 in print): the interview branched into this as the newsman asked some questions—it turns out that his mom is a Witness, and he thanked Hendricks for keeping her safe. The languages feat can be done because there is no profit motive, Hendricks said. That’s why no one else even comes close—Google, Apple, Amazon—no one. “There’s no end to what can be done if there is not a profit motive,” he said.
A cynical me says that he will probably be fired for going so far “off-script.” Naw—I don’t really think he will be, but if it is like the Cameroon doctor, he could be. She and her fellow doctors were promptly muzzled on social media for “spreading misinformation.” Will the News13 reporter be accused of “enabling” it as well?
Her turn: A major study of the Henry Ford Healthcare System in Detroit finds that the drug hydroxychloroquine is extremely effective. Why it is trashed as it is, I will never know. But since it is dirt cheap, and since the President has recommended it, it is hard not to think that either or both or these facts suggest possible reasons. 
By the time, the Henry Ford study was released, media had already reached the verdict that the drug was no good. This was based upon an earlier study published in Lancet that said hydroxychloroquine was ineffective, and in fact, even dangerous. However, Lancet later retracted their article. The reason they retracted it is that it was of a study that had not been submitted to peer review. The reason it had not been submitted to peer review is that it would have failed—it was a very sloppy study, sabotaged in numerous ways. The reason it was taken up by the media anyway, despite being so sloppy, is that it discredited Trump, who first said he liked the stuff and later that he even took it. Everything is politicized today—everyone gets into the fray of battling over who will rule the world.
Hydroxychloroquine has been around forever, a mainstay of treatment for several ills. It would have been run off the road long ago were it so dangerous. It is extremely cheap—another reason to attack it from an entirely different quarter—Remdesivir, a competing treatment, costs $1000 per dose! Does the cheaper drug have side effects? Just listen to the side effects of drugs relentlessly hawked on TV today—it is enough to scare your socks off. Cardiologist Dr. William O’Neill, medical director at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan, director of the Detroit study said: “I've never seen science [so] politicized in 40 years of practice.”
 
 
 
 

It is as I wrote in the introduction to Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia:
[The Witness faith is “not the only minority faith to experience persecution in Russia. All of them do to some extent. Witnesses are in the vanguard – the first to have their organization outlawed, but many are shaking in their boots that they will be next.“
They are still shaking three years later. Many faiths in Russia experience “problems.” Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses have suffered their organization declared illegal, which vastly compounds the nature of their “problems.”

If you say that you do, you will bring back JTR cheering from whatever is wrong with him, even raise him from the dead in the unfortunate event that he is in that state.

When I heard the truncated clip, I was disappointed. It makes our guy look like a religious nut. “It’s a modern-day miracle,” he says, seemingly his lead-off line about the Jehovah’s Witnesses move to present their annual summer conventions online.
It’s not a modern-day miracle. It’s a technological accomplishment—an impressive one, to be sure—after all, it involves 500 languages, done on a crash basis, and broadcast worldwide—but it is not a “miracle.” It is not Jesus walking on water. Forgive me if I admit that when I first saw the clip with that as his lead statement, I supposed that the man was a nut—an over enthusiastic zealot who had drunk too much of his own Kool-Aid.
Yet, do I not come across the entire interview several days later to find it of a completely different flavor? It turns out that he is not that way at all—his remarks were framed to make him sound a fanatic by a media that feels it their duty to do so when dealing with matters of faith, something that is not their forte. He never meant the “miracle” remark literally. It’s a gush of enthusiasm such as anyone will have upon completing an overwhelming project. It is Neil Armstrong saying “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” It is a throw-off line of hyperbole that comes 5 minutes into the interview—not the lead-off pronouncement of the truncated version.
This is so infuriating, but also so typical. Everyone will say something in the course of 15 minutes that can be misconstrued by those of another agenda—who simply can’t get their heads around a different point of view or may even be trying to deliberately sabotage it—to make the person look like a nut.
I almost wonder if something similar is now at work with the doctor from Cameroon recommending the hydroxychloroquine drug for Covid 19. There were ten doctors who banded together for a public statement before the steps of the Supreme Court, but because this one (Stella Immanuel) has made remarks in her past about demons, and the others presumably have not, she becomes the sole media focus to discredit the lot of them. The other nine are sent out to pasture.
I don’t often speak on my blog of demons, nor of the devil. Much of my target audience chokes at mention of God, so should I really send them into orbit with posts of the devil? Besides, humans are perfectly capable of doing evil things all on their own—a line of demarcation is hard to draw. 
But neither do I think someone should be pilloried for bringing up the topic, much less when it has nothing to do with the story at hand. If anything, I am the expedient chicken, not her. Anyone who knows anything about Africa knows that belief in interaction with the spirits is well-nigh universal. She is to be expected not to pick up on it? Let the thinkers today get a handle on evil—even eradicate it a little bit—before they go ridiculing those who go off their materialistic script.
At root, though the doctor and our guy may be poles apart, the reason to trash them is the same, or at least it is a kissing cousin: they are both serious about things not endorsed by today’s prevailing atheistic materialistic view. In her case, there may be more to the story—something that is deliberately discredited. In our case, there certainly is. Us first:
Robert Hendricks, spokesperson for Jehovah’s Witnesses, speaks of how both the door-to-door ministry and the annual conventions have been suspended for the first time in history. The reasons are telling—that of “respect for life” and “love of neighbor.” Probably no one has more potential to spread the Covid 19 virus than Jehovah’s Witnesses in their old model. Not only do they routinely approach people, but their organization is the largest convention-holding one in the world—people converge sometimes by the tens of thousands for events held in stadiums. We just couldn’t see ourselves doing that this year, Hendricks said. With a lead-in time of only about a month, Witnesses put the entire event online to be streamed worldwide. 
Their organization had gone into lockdown even before governments began to require it. “Just because you can drive 75 mph in some areas doesn’t mean that you should,” he stated. I told the CultExpert, he of the #freedomofmind hashtag, that “our” people were more responsible than his. Our people promptly and without fuss laid low—Covid 19 would be long gone by now if all were like them—but “his” people? You don’t think many of them will use their “freedom of mind” to tell the government what it can do with its rules? 
Frankly, since media jumps all over churches that defy “science” by gathering, you would think they would praise to the heavens one that has set the example for being proactive. Yet, even when trying to compliment, they are hamstrung by a mindset that pronounces religion outmoded. Even as the New York Times covers the socially responsible move, (that of suspending the door-to-door ministry, not that of the conventions, which came later), they take for granted that it is done only for the sake of appearances. “It followed anguished discussions at Watchtower headquarters with leaders deciding March 20 that knocking on doors would leave the impression that members were disregarding the safety of those they hoped to convert,” as though the safety itself doesn’t mean beans to them. “Members are called on to share scriptures in person with nonmembers,” it wrote. Well, in fact they are called to do it, but it is by the scriptures themselves, and not the commands of HQ, as they seem to frame it. “Now if I am declaring the good news, it is no reason for me to boast, for necessity is laid upon me. Really, woe to me if I do not declare the good news!” writes the apostle at 1 Corinthians 9:16. Why do these materialistic ones not just say that the Bible itself is a cult manual and be done with it?
As to the 500 languages (1000 in print): the interview branched into this as the newsman asked some questions—it turns out that his mom is a Witness, and he thanked Hendricks for keeping her safe. The languages feat can be done because there is no profit motive, Hendricks said. That’s why no one else even comes close—Google, Apple, Amazon—no one. “There’s no end to what can be done if there is not a profit motive,” he said.
A cynical me says that he will probably be fired for going so far “off-script.” Naw—I don’t really think he will be, but if it is like the Cameroon doctor, he could be. She and her fellow doctors were promptly muzzled on social media for “spreading misinformation.” Will the News13 reporter be accused of “enabling” it as well?
Her turn: A major study of the Henry Ford Healthcare System in Detroit finds that the drug hydroxychloroquine is extremely effective. Why it is trashed as it is, I will never know. But since it is dirt cheap, and since the President has recommended it, it is hard not to think that either or both or these facts suggest possible reasons. 
By the time, the Henry Ford study was released, media had already reached the verdict that the drug was no good. This was based upon an earlier study published in Lancet that said hydroxychloroquine was ineffective, and in fact, even dangerous. However, Lancet later retracted their article. The reason they retracted it is that it was of a study that had not been submitted to peer review. The reason it had not been submitted to peer review is that it would have failed—it was a very sloppy study, sabotaged in numerous ways. The reason it was taken up by the media anyway, despite being so sloppy, is that it discredited Trump, who first said he liked the stuff and later that he even took it. Everything is politicized today—everyone gets into the fray of battling over who will rule the world.
Hydroxychloroquine has been around forever, a mainstay of treatment for several ills. It would have been run off the road long ago were it so dangerous. It is extremely cheap—another reason to attack it from an entirely different quarter—Remdesivir, a competing treatment, costs $1000 per dose! Does the cheaper drug have side effects? Just listen to the side effects of drugs relentlessly hawked on TV today—it is enough to scare your socks off. Cardiologist Dr. William O’Neill, medical director at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan, director of the Detroit study said: “I've never seen science [so] politicized in 40 years of practice.”
 
 
 
 

Doesn’t this remind one of Gandalf the Grey going down into the abyss to cover the escape of Frodo and his pals? Why don’t you divert a little more energy towards the goal of being in that New World, you yo-yo?
Perhaps then your credentials for condemning everything under the sun will improve.
#FlyYouFools!

“They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work” Is the expression I have heard of the Soviet Union.

Well, you make a good point here.
and here.
Truman wouldn’t let him, and was pilloried for standing up to the Great Man, firing him. I recall being amazed when I first learned of this. (I had heard it was 50–compromise and say ‘up to 50’)

In the end, the only thing that matters is that certain countries will not permit the spread of the good news, and other countries will, barring only exceptional circumstances, and even then with less vigor. This makes them, by default, “the bad guys”—certainly to us, and if the Good News really is good, to God.
Other than that, would I have anything in particular against communism? I’m not sure that I would. I am content where I am. But by most accounts, persons in China are content where they are too. 
This is exactly the point I made long ago regarding Trump that brought JTR to his feet cheering. Brothers will carry on and on about neutrality, admonishing each other should they detect wavering, and then will swallow anything rotten about the US President that his enemies serve up. Even Bro Jackson, when he says we must guard against that furtive thought, “I hope that idiot doesn’t get into power” will cause some to ask, because of the time and place in which he said it, “I wonder what idiot he has in mind?”
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2020/03/ecclesiastes-1020-do-not-speak-ill-of-the-king-jws-and-politics-in-the-age-of-trump.html
I think it is a function of where we have been in life, and what outrages infuriate us most. There are plenty enough to go around and stoke all schools of thought.
Nobody mows them down like the atheists do when they are setting the stage for their next secular utopia, or changing the props, determined to advance with some Great Leap Forward. I like it that @Arauna departed from Asia briefly to highlight what happened with the atheist-rationalists gained the upper hand in France, a nominal “Christian” country. I read a book (on Ben Franklin) that points out that David Hume, the English sceptic, was at a lost as to how to deal with the certainty adopted by the French atheists.
In contrast, when the West mows them down, it tends to focus on just subjugating them, rather than eradicating them. The West is more likely to be “killing them softly”—perhaps by shoveling them into the maw of some financial market, just like JWI outlines above with drugs. In gathering material for ‘Dear Mr Putin- JWs Write’ I found that America bombs more countries than Russia—quite a few more—so that you almost wonder who it is that is putting his trust in “fortresses,” but since the king of the north does it more openly—parading weapons on May Day, and so forth—their military persona stands. Still, it is big business capitalism that inevitably puts lobbyists in Washington to persuade the power brokers that the world is a super dangerous place abounding with enemies, but—“fortunately for you—we here at Bob’s Bombs make just the products that you need.”
When I did a post ago battling atheists who were railing on about slavery as the greatest possible evil, and how the Bible must be no good because it was willing to work with it rather than flatly condemn it, one contributor joined in to say that in the Western world the way it is now, many would be benefited by being slaves—their conditions would improve by most measures, if only because most “owners” would realize the value of keeping their “property” in good repair. He ran then-current figures of minimum wage, and assumed entirely reasonable situations, to show that the lives of many working poor were in many ways far worse than slaves.
It is all what outrages trigger you most, and that is determined by one’s experiences if life. 
I do agree with this, however “evidence” takes many forms. She speaks of people that “she knows.” Is that lesser evidence than reports that have been culled by a think tank? Go find a think tank of the opposite persuasion—there are plenty of them in any field. The universal pattern in the US is to run the “evidence” of the other person into the ditch, though I will concede that her case is stronger if she makes it in print and with backing. Still, “evidence” is compounded or discarded by whoever’s interests prevail at the moment, often it is financial muscle that propels some evidence and suppresses other evidence. 
 

It may be one of those “what goes around comes around situations.” 
Isn’t Bolshevikism in Russia a Western import, injected to better ensure an outcome of WW1, without any regard for the peoples there?
Didn’t the Opium Wars serve to illustrate the West’s only interest in China—as an enriching market, and if you had to transform the population into addicts, so be it? Not to mention how peeved they were after the war that Japan, the country that had behaved so savagely towards them, was nonetheless restored by the US—whereas their interests counted for squat?
Everything may be just as you say, and to be sure, I suspect that JWI is a closet-pinko  still, it seems to me a case of how the sins of the fathers come home to roost.
@Annashould weigh in on this, for I recall her saying how she has lived under communist rule and is not a fan.

No.
“There are those pesky people again coming up the drive trying to teach us the Bible!
I sure wish those  Oneness Pentecostals and the  La Luz del Mundo and the Iglesia ni Cristo  and the Christadelphians  and the Christian Scientists, and the Dawn Bible Students, and the Living Church of God, and the Assemblies of Yahweh, And the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, And the Members Church of God International, and the Unitarian Christians, and the Unitarian Universalist Christians, and the The Way International, and the The Church of God International, and the United Church of God. would give it a rest!”

I think I can also prove that both David's and Solomon's kingdoms were run by men. Could these same men still be used by Jehovah?

A laughing emoji! 
I already had to send myself back to Bible 101 on account of this fellow. I fear that upon graduation, I will have to take the course all over again. He is both hateful and stupid. I can deal with one or the other, but the combination......

No.
“There are those pesky people again coming up the drive trying to teach us the Bible!
I sure wish those  Oneness Pentecostals and the  La Luz del Mundo and the Iglesia ni Cristo  and the Christadelphians  and the Christian Scientists, and the Dawn Bible Students, and the Living Church of God, and the Assemblies of Yahweh, And the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, And the Members Church of God International, and the Unitarian Christians, and the Unitarian Universalist Christians, and the The Way International, and the The Church of God International, and the United Church of God. would give it a rest!”

No.
“There are those pesky people again coming up the drive trying to teach us the Bible!
I sure wish those  Oneness Pentecostals and the  La Luz del Mundo and the Iglesia ni Cristo  and the Christadelphians  and the Christian Scientists, and the Dawn Bible Students, and the Living Church of God, and the Assemblies of Yahweh, And the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, And the Members Church of God International, and the Unitarian Christians, and the Unitarian Universalist Christians, and the The Way International, and the The Church of God International, and the United Church of God. would give it a rest!”