Pudgy

This is headline news on the most watched cable news in America. 
America is doomed. The inmates are running the Insane Asylum.

 
 

I'm not surprised about anything any more. When I see the scope of the evil that humans have brought to life on this planet I'm at a loss as to why Jehovah hasn't ended this nonsense a long time ago. I can no longer even imagine a series of events which would lead me to conclude that the end was something I should be expecting, as in the manner normal humans have as to expectations. All I can say is that the end will happen at an unexpected time, which could mean that my expectations based on events have to be thoroughly exhausted and then when it is no longer even possible to expect anything, then the end will come. But I say hasn't this already come to pass for many, many thousands upon thousands of people besides me and my puny thoughts? So even if I might contingently be exhausted as regards my expectations, then the end isn't anything contingent on anything any one of humanity might be expecting.

This is headline news on the most watched cable news in America. 
America is doomed. The inmates are running the Insane Asylum.

 
 

You should not post such things in the open club. Try the closed club, where every sort of riff-raff abounds.

Speaking of humor. I like this guy and I learned some things at the same time.
 

It is good to note that bans also have their counter effects. There is no guarantee that bans are successful, that is what experience tells us. People drink alcohol and drive motor vehicles relentlessly even though prohibitions are clearly posted and penalties are enforced.
Ideologically oriented and convinced people, in this case with religious beliefs, will resist the prohibitions of their religious freedom. JWs are not an only example of that. And other people, because of different beliefs, are ready to endure contempt and various prohibitions of society.
One question is always asked, is it worth suffering? When GB bans the wearing of beards for men or trousers for women, we wonder if the ban is worth enduring? JWs have proven it's worth. Because they also received liberation from those prohibitions. lol
But, Is it useful for a Russian brother to wear a beard? And Orthodox priests in Russia also wear beards, so maybe the end of the ban on wearing beards will not significantly affect JW men in Russia, because they could be mistaken for members of the "false religion".
GB abandons some of its bans, and there are various motives and reasons behind this. The fact that something is true, just, moral and pleasing to God plays the least role in all of this. It is about pragmatic reasons and the issue of money and material possessions. Also damage control, primarily due to the specific policy of running a massive international corporation, which is a religiously-ideologically colored hierarhical administration.
Each ideology is interwoven with its own extremisms, which are accepted by members within that ideology. WTJWorg and GB keep proving their own extremism which they project to their followers. And some JWs rebel within themselves against it, but then they become "apostates" and are expelled from the "society" because they are under "ban". Some leave and others stay despite the bans. Some remain in WTJWorg and balance the ban with their freedom.
So, as written in the article, bans are of limited effect. But in the meantime, you have to endure. Is it possible? Is it necessary?

Why banning the Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t work for Russia
BY EMILY B. BARAN APRIL 20TH 2017 The Supreme Court of Russia has a decision to make this week about whether to label the Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization and liquidate its assets. This act would transform the religious community into a criminal network, and make individual Witnesses vulnerable to arrest simply for speaking about their faith with others. While the court case has attracted recent media attention, this move is the culmination of two decades of increasing state hostility to Witnesses. In the late 1990s, Moscow took the Witnesses to court to deny them legal standing in the city limits. After several years of court hearings, the city banned the organization. In more recent years, anti-extremism laws drafted in the wake of domestic terrorism have been turned against Witness magazines and books. Currently, over eighty publications have been placed on the federal list of extremist materials. Even their website is now illegal. So is My Book of Bible Stories, an illustrated book for children, listed alongside publications by terrorist organizations.
If the state criminalizes the Witnesses, it will represent a major deterioration in religious toleration in post-Soviet Russia. It will also put Russia at odds with the European Court of Human Rights, which has repeatedly ruled in favor of the Witnesses in the past two decades. It may make other minority faiths vulnerable to similar legal challenges. In the 1990s, scholars spoke of a newly opened religious marketplace, in which post-Soviet citizens, freed from the constraints of state-enforced atheism, shopped around among the faith traditions. It is fair to say that these days, this marketplace has fewer customers, fewer stalls, and more regulations.
If history is any guide, Russia will find it nearly impossible to eliminate Jehovah’s Witnesses. Soviet dissident author Vladimir Bukovsky once admiringly wrote of the Witnesses’ legendary persistence under ban. When the Soviet Union barred religious literature from crossing its borders, Witnesses set up underground bunkers to print illegal magazines for their congregations. When Soviet officials prohibited Witnesses from hosting religious services, they gathered in small groups in their apartments, often in the middle of the night. Sometimes they snuck away to nearby woods or out onto the vast steppe, where they could meet with less scrutiny. When the state told believers that they could not evangelize their faith to others, Witnesses chatted up their neighbors, coworkers, and friends. When these actions landed them in labor camps, Witnesses sought out converts among their fellow prisoners. Witnesses are certain to revive many of these tactics if placed in similar circumstances in the future.
Moreover, technology makes it far more difficult for Russia to control the religious practices of its citizens. Although the Witnesses’ official website is no longer available in Russia, individual members can easily share religious literature through email or dozens of other social media platforms and apps. While Soviet Witnesses had to write coded reports and hand-deliver them through an underground courier network, Witnesses today can text this information in seconds. Technology will also facilitate meeting times for religious services in private homes.
The Russian government simply does not have the manpower to enforce its own ban. It is hard to imagine that local officials could effectively prevent over 170,000 people across more than 2,000 congregations from gathering together multiple times per week, as Witnesses do worldwide. The case of Taganrog is instructive. Several hundred Witnesses lived there in 2009, when the city declared the organization illegal. A few years later, it convicted sixteen Witnesses for ignoring the ban and continuing to gather their congregations for services. The state spent over a year in investigations and court hearings for sixteen people, a tiny fraction of the total congregation, and then suspended the sentences and fines rather than waste more resources in following through on its punishment guidelines. There are not enough police officers in Russia to monitor the daily activities of each and every Witness, and the Witnesses know it. Under a ban, everyone will face more scrutiny, a few will be dealt more serious consequences, and most will continue practicing their faith regardless.
Russia may nonetheless decide that all of this conflict is worth it. After all, Soviet officials were fairly successful in relegating Witnesses to the margins of society. Few Russians will complain if Witnesses no longer come to knock on their door. After all, even Americans rarely have kind words for religious missionaries at their own doorsteps. In my own research, I have never heard a single Russian, other than a scholar, say anything positive about Witnesses. For the record, my experience with Americans has been similar. On a more basic level, Russian citizens may not even notice the Witnesses’ absence from public life. While the post-Soviet period saw a religious revival for all faiths, far fewer joined the Witnesses than the Russian Orthodox Church. For all their recent growth in membership, the Witnesses remain a tiny minority in a largely secular society.
The vocal determination of Witnesses not to acquiesce to state demands should not cause observers to overlook the very real damage a ban would do to this community. Yes, Witnesses have faced similar challenges before and have dealt with them. For decades, they held their baptisms in local rivers and lakes under cover of night. In the post-Soviet period, new members were finally able to celebrate their baptisms in full view of their fellow believers at public conventions. A long-time Witness who attended one of these events in the early 1990s recalled, “What happiness, what freedom!” A new ban would mean a return to this underground life, to a hushed ceremony in cold waters. This is not what freedom of conscience looks like in modern states.
Emily B. Baran is the author of Dissent on the Margins: How Jehovah’s Witnesses Defied Communism and Lived to Preach About It. Her work explores the shifting contours of dissent and freedom in the Soviet Union and its successor states. She is Assistant Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University.

Does this apply to a lot of bearded people at the meeting?

I wish you a quick and good recovery.

What you believe does not affect what I observe.
It only affects YOUR ability.

I believe Chat GBT is having trouble with the word “covered”. 
Try this: “Draw a black an white New Yorker style cartoon with a man in bib overalls facing a wall, who has just hit his thumb with a hammer and is screaming  special character profanity in a text balloon with a woman behind him dressed in a housedress and apron with her two index fingers touching the ear holes of a stupid looking parrot on a perch”
Alternately, a non-sequiter style cartoon of the Delorean from “Back to the Future” in an abandoned shopping mall parking lot, with Dr. Emmett Brown slamming his hand in the car door, and exclaiming in a text balloon “Great Scott! and random fluctuations at 1.21 gigawatts in the spacetime continuum!!”, with Marty McFly watching in horror.

Me: No, if you remember what you drew in the very first picture. The man should have just hit his finger or thumb with a hammer while trying to hammer a nail in the wall. The woman should be next to the parrot. She should be pointing her left index finger at the parrot's ear, and she should point her right finger at the parrots other ear. But her index fingers should be close enough to be touching the parrot.

Me: 
I like the black and white version better, and the parrot should be back on a perch which should be just like the first picture you drew, but with the pole a bit shorter so that the women is just slightly taller than the perch, and can more easily put her fingers at each side of the parrots head, but touching the parrots head at each side so it appears that she is trying to stop the parrot from hearing

Me: Keep the same picture, but have the woman holding the index finger of each hand at both sides of the parrot's head as if she is trying to cover the parrot's ears to keep the parrot from hearing whatever the man is saying.

I've adjusted the scene according to your instructions. The woman is now holding her index fingers at both sides of the parrot's head, attempting to cover its ears.
Not quite. So I try again:

I pay $20 a month to OpenAI to play with their 4.0+ version of ChatGPT. It's not really an expense because I still do some remote consulting for a tech company in Ohio. 
Today, I decided to try out its ability to draw pictures on demand. I wanted a picture of a man about to curse because he just hit his thumb with a hammer, and I want his wife, to put her fingers in the "ears" of their pet parrot, so that the parrot doesn't pick up any bad words to repeat.
So here goes:
Prompt: 
I need a New Yorker style cartoon containing man hammering a nail in the wall and accidentally hitting his thumb. At the same time a woman, presumably his wife, is standing next to a tall perch where a parrot appears oblivious and she, the wife, is putting her fingers in the ears of a parrot.


 Not terrible, but it didn't get the right idea about the parrot's ears being covered.
So I try again:
 

What is the use of comparing the decisions and actions of "perfect" people, Jesus, Adam and Eve with "imperfect" people, here and now? lol

All these problems can be solved if the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society administers Justice and policy as specifically outlined by Jesus in Matthew the 18th chapter.
Matthew 18:15 is a critical key element of that.
… so simple a solution.
So important it was recognized and incorporated into the Constitution of the United States.
All JWs know Matthew 18:15  is a command as important as Memorial attendance.
This creates a problem, though…….
It disenfranchises arbitrary use of power, to do arbitrary things.
….like ignoring Matthew 18.
 
 

…. For the agenda driven intellectually challenged people, what I have just recommended is only what the Bible specifically states.
Specific and direct instructions directly fromJesus Christ, on exactly how to run a Congregation.
…. specific and direct instructions from our King, Jesus Christ, on EXACTLY how to run a congregation.
Do we do that that way?
Not even close.

The lust for land, money power and real estate usurped the instructions of a man so poor, he didn’t even have a suitcase, and walked everywhere.
 
There is no record in the Bible of ANY Congregation ANYWHERE owning a building to meet in.

The lust for land, money power and real estate usurped the instructions of a man so poor, he didn’t even have a suitcase, and walked everywhere.
 
There is no record in the Bible of ANY Congregation ANYWHERE owning a building to meet in.

All these problems can be solved if the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society administers Justice and policy as specifically outlined by Jesus in Matthew the 18th chapter.
Matthew 18:15 is a critical key element of that.
… so simple a solution.
So important it was recognized and incorporated into the Constitution of the United States.
All JWs know Matthew 18:15  is a command as important as Memorial attendance.
This creates a problem, though…….
It disenfranchises arbitrary use of power, to do arbitrary things.
….like ignoring Matthew 18.
 
 

…. For the agenda driven intellectually challenged people, what I have just recommended is only what the Bible specifically states.
Specific and direct instructions directly fromJesus Christ, on exactly how to run a Congregation.
…. specific and direct instructions from our King, Jesus Christ, on EXACTLY how to run a congregation.
Do we do that that way?
Not even close.

Similar to the time when the generations of those who traveled in the desert died out and never saw the New World of the Jewish Paradise, so today there are generations of JWs who do not know what was taught in 1952, or before or after that year regarding those who cease to be JWs, as well as in other matters when it comes to dogma or administrative procedures.
You are now introducing the issue of business relations between former and current JWs. Your GB still needs to redefine the protocols with regard to the "new instructions" about dfd. As far as I understand, 3 categories of problematic JWs are mentioned. Excluded, apostates and minor baptized members.
The current practice does not mention the reason why someone was excluded or left the membership on their own. What are the reasons for not making it public?
If you can clarify for me and other readers, please comment and give source the information. Thank you!
Furthermore, in order for an ordinary JW to "decide independently" which person to say "hello" to, and which one not to, he/she must have enough information to make a decision. What information should there be about a dfd or diss person? May the elders and the congregation treat people who have committed the "same sin" but are not the same age, differently? How can this be explained through Jesus' teaching? No interpretations by GB, just the pure statement of Jesus, not the opinion of the WTJWorg administration and lawyers.
If it will be publicly announced in the congregation why someone is excommunicated, then this will cause some new elements that will not be "biblically justified", because the current practice shows that today's procedure carried out by the JC is "the only correct one". Abandoning the current procedure would mean that this existing practice is "unbiblical." "Shoot yourself in the foot." lol
Will reading names and revealing private information also be illegal due to existing regulations, laws on information that relates to individuals and should not be publicly available?
GB is starting to fear the effects of world courts, such as Norway, and these new changes are just a reflection of pragmatism, not genuine concern for the membership.

Me: Draw a normal human response of a person monitoring George 88 and JWI going at it for days and days in the open club over some point of chronology that neither yields an inch on.
ChatGBT: Okay, I’ve considered your request and I believe the following fills the bill