1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Or was it that once ‘money’ is backed by debt rather than gold, there is no limit to how much of the stuff can be printed, with any day of reckoning put far far off into the future (though perhaps not so far now).

That too (normally w/ some inflationary precautions, ha ha). But the day of reckoning over debt is put further off if there is more international interdependence on that same dollar. The Petro Dollar was only the largest tactic. Other tactics include military aid in $USD, foreign aid in $USD, IMF loans, and even putting military bases in as many countries as possible which forces the host country (Japan, for example) to deal with a lot of $USD alongside their own currency.

To keep it propped, other nations must give it its props.

46 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Don’t forget Big Defense

True. They are on Wall Street, too. So is Pharma. They are all getting a "shot in the arm" from this situation. [Oh no! Is he talking about Stonewall Jackson, again?]

Boeing (NYSE:BA), $136.3 billion ; Raytheon Technologies (NYSE:RTX), $131.5 billion ; Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), $100.0 billion ]

5 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Any scenario these days of the US govt working for the interests of non-renewable energy company seems a little hard to swallow.

Most of the money supporting ALL DC-centered candidates still comes from Pharma, Wall Street, and "Oil". So I'm thinking it still goes in the direction of non-renewable. Look at the most recent relevant bill out Washington. It REQUIRES non-renewable energy expansion for every renewable initiative.

Also, look at the direction of economic rhetoric coming out of Washington. The undercurrent of the whole thing goes back to when Nixon took the US off the "Gold Standard." Gold wasn't stable enough while Russia and South Africa had an unpredictable influence on the percentage of the actual gold supply. So the US decided to get full veto power over Saudi Arabian oil distribution (and other major producers), and tried to force all major oil-buying countries to only pay (for oil) in U.S. dollars. This made the petro dollar the new "gold standard." But now Saudi Arabia has undermined that agreement by selling to countries without requiring U.S. dollars. The biggest concern economically is the fact that the US is losing control while China, Russia, India, etc, have flouted the Petro Dollar. Russia was in the middle of its own negotiations with Saudi Arabia when the piplelines were sabotaged.

To me this says that the US is still knee-deep in oil.

12 hours ago, ComfortMyPeople said:

Please, do it you for me!

OK. It's here:

4 hours ago, ComfortMyPeople said:

(Daniel 11:43) . . .And he will rule over the hidden treasures of gold and silver and over all the desirable things of Egypt. And the Libʹy·ans and the E·thi·oʹpi·ans will be at his steps.

I suspect that @Mic Drop, the original poster of this topic, didn't expect it to turn into a discussion about interpretation of Bible prophecy. But it might be interesting to bring this up elsewhere. If you'd like, I (or you) could start a new topic under one of the JW forums. I just noticed something in that Daniel passage for the first time today.

The tactic of labeling things as fascist, nazi, racist, communist, socialist, when they are not, is a real thing. And I suspect this kind of tactic has been used on all sides of opposing ideologies.

It's curious however, that G. Edward Griffin only pretends to be giving a source for the initial quote that he "reads from a book" to make it appear more credible, but doesn't provide specifics about the source. Yet, it's exactly the kind of projectionism and reverse counter-blaming that has now been openly admitted to have been used against communism and third party political groups, etc., as a useful tactic. The John Birch Society has specifically been caught making up such things so that persons like Ronald Reagan and others would repeat them without question.

There's a pretty good discussion of this supposed quote on stackexchange. The rest of this post contains only excerpts from that discussion:

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/44039/was-this-communist-party-directive-from-1943-genuine

Was this Communist Party Directive from 1943 genuine?

3 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Or is it to enforce a globalist view of breaking free from oil as a power source

I don't know if you were distinguishing oil from natural gas, but the idea makes even less sense when it's realized that the timing of the explosions coincided with the opening of the Baltic pipelines which replace some of what Nord Stream was capable of supplying.

32 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Is it to win business for American energy companies?

I don't think that was the only reason. Several countries in Europe would not be ready to stand by the US-sponsored sanctions against Russia (because they don't want their citizens to be faced with cold this winter). They were still compromising on the economic sanctions, but would have no more reason to compromise if the pipelines were sabotaged.

The US/NATO war against Russia which is being accomplished by using the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder is a war where Russia has tried to negotiate a peaceful solution for years. Since 2014, Ukraine has bombed and tortured its own Russian-speaking citizens in the Donbas regions, killing at least 14,000 of them just in the last 8 years. In fact, when Russia pulls out of a region, Ukraine uses it as an excuse to continue bombing their own Russian-speaking populations there even during this war. Russia has been trying to support the Russian-allied Donbas regions going all the way back to the Minsk agreements. Even during this war, Russia has offered to negotiate and the West has interfered with these negotiations. Boris Johnson even openly intervened at a point when it seemed Ukraine was ready for peace. Remember that the BILLIONS of dollars in military aid, is not free from the US military contractors. They still get paid through US citizen's tax dollars and payments approved from Ukraine's puppet government, that the US set up there.

So the basic idea that makes even more immediate sense is that Germany and others now have no choice but to support the US war against Russia via Ukraine.

On 9/30/2022 at 9:58 AM, TrueTomHarley said:

Is it to win business for American energy companies? Or is it to enforce a globalist view of breaking free from oil as a power source

Haven't seen much evidence for the validity of the second part of that question. The idea that the US would push for a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine has been public even for many years prior to the US coup that replaced the president in 2014. Even Biden stated many years prior that the way to get Russia involved would be to push for more NATO countries, including Ukraine, along the Russian border.

Also, Rice was not the only person to admit that Europe needs to be forced into a greater dependence on US energy. It's a well-known, and sometimes openly admitted goal of US war in the Middle-East to gain control over the energy resources. Trump admitted it openly at least once. The very reason that the US continues to occupy about a third of Syria has been to continue stealing control of its oil. The commission that looked into whether Assad (Syria) actually "gassed his own people" had actually already debunked it, although the debunking was from the same people who would later change their story. Libya was building up better relations with the US, when Gaddafi started pushing for national control of the oil resources, and cooperation among African nations. It is not really a secret that this is why Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and others decided to murder him (and laughed about it).

It's been suggested that NATO Article 5 should come into play, meaning that all NATO nations should now attack the United States on suspicion that it was the U.S. that just attacked a viable fuel supply for NATO countries like Germany.

In 2014, back when the US publicly admitted to plotting the coup in Ukraine (via WikiLeaks), Ms Rice admitted the overarching goal of weakening Russia's energy business by sabotaging their economy so that rich supplies of US energy would be favored over Russian energy.

1 hour ago, C-D67 said:

Do you wish to continue?

Sure. It's a bad habit from past employment, but I think a lot about what people can do with statistics. You know: "lies, d#$%n lies and statistics." You can make people believe in things that are true, only half-true, or completely false. Here are my own numbers below. I had never looked at mine before, and it reminded me that the 11 downvotes I gave out were part of a joke that I was playing with someone else here.

But I can also state, with some sense of real accomplishment, that nearly 580 of the 618 downvotes I received, all came from the very same person, even though they came from about 27 of that same person's various accounts.

FWIW, Here is the full picture for Thinking in case someone might get a skewed picture from the incomplete picture:

And several of those downvotes she received came from you-know-who, which makes them about as meaningless as downvotes can get.

If one were to do a quick comparison. She gives out less than 1% of her votes as downvotes. The ratio is 1967+55+148= 2,170 to 13. That's not even counting the ones that indicate a sense of humor.

By comparison, C-D67 has given out more than twice as many down-votes as ANY other kind of vote. Where have we seen that before, I wonder???

1 hour ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Why anyone would waste their time issuing a downvote I’ll never know.

I could tell you but then I'd have to down-vote you.

In the Sochi video, the following picture appears:

This one is from 0:22 seconds in, where a taxi driver (?) opens his door to get out of the car. That was the Sochi, Russia video. This next one is from the 1:22 point in the China video, which you also provided here: https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/90025-china-river-overflows-china-city-disappears-and-a-flood-hits-zhong-county-in-chongqing/

I get the feeling that both floods happened and both were disastrous. (Although you can get more visitors if you hype up the title to make it even more disastrous.) But there is often very little reporting footage available when a flood has just happened a few hours earlier. So YouTube channels and news sites that are anxious to pretend they have the most up-to-date reporting will splice in footage from all the similar floods they can find, even using footage from previous floods that go back several years. (It's not just YouTube, of course. Major news organizations have been caught doing the same thing.)

On 7/21/2022 at 8:11 AM, TrueTomHarley said:

A brother in our congregation who works with the deaf, who himself has deaf ones in his family, casts doubt on this. Rather, he says it is from long habit of battling Bell’s palsy, which paralyzes the face and which you overcome by deliberate working of face muscles. In response to my questioning, he said he had it “on good authority,” so I rate it probably 90% as being true.

A few months ago, I looked up "Stephen Lett" together with "Bells Palsy" in Google to see if I could find anything on this. I found out that TTH had presented an article about Stephen Lett called Let us Appreciate Stephen Lett (https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/96dllz/let_us_appreciate_stephen_lett/)

The article was from 4 years ago, and there was a later edit from TTH which said:

Edit: It turns out that Brother Lett has grappled with Bell's palsy, which paralizes facial muscles on the affected side, and as part of rehab, he got into the habit of exagerated facial movements, a habit that stuck, or is perhaps even still advisable. The elder telling me this said, when I pressed him, that he had it "on good authority." Knowing him, I rate it as probably a 90% chance. So you never know. You just don't.

Even before locating that, I had already clicked on another much more recent comment in reddit that said:

According to what I read he had Bells Palsy and his exaggerated facial expressions were acquired over time in response to trying to overcome the nerve damage.

I don't know if that more recent comment had been picked up through TTH's comments, or if it was from an independent source.

5 hours ago, BroRando said:

Acutally it proves @Patiently waiting for Truth is wrong. The letter "J" was used prior to 1949.  

@Arauna has often pointed out that something she calls "hate OCD" will affect the ability of a person to tell the truth about another person's point of view when it disagrees (at least in part) with their own point of view. @Patiently waiting for Truth (John) has made several arguments that are wrong in my opinion. Yet he  has clearly made the point that the letter "J" was used prior to 1949. You create a false, "straw man" argument, something akin to a "lie" when you pretend that he claimed something different.

Of course, it's so ludicrous to pretend that John claimed there was no letter J before 1949 that I wouldn't call it a lie. It's so obvious that you already know you are wrong that it falls under some other category. It's purposeful nonsense, just like claiming that Hitler is his hero.

My best guess is that you were merely grasping at "strawmen" so that you can divert to the claim that "he is wrong" because that is easier for you than admitting that @Patiently waiting for Truth was correct at least on that one particular point about the Spanish monk, Raymund Martini. Even the Watchtower admits that John's information was right on that point.

For a 70-some year old man, John sometimes comes across as childish. I'm sure that I, too, sometimes come across that way. But when it's obvious that I am responding childishly, I don't mind having it pointed out to me.

18 hours ago, Chioke Lin said:

18 hours ago, Patiently waiting for Truth said:

n 1278 a spanish monk, Raymundo Martini, wrote the latin work PUGIO FIDEI (Dagger of faith). In it he used the name of God, spelling it Yohoua. Later printings of this work, dated some centuries later, used the spelling JEHOVA.

Thanks for confirming the Watchtower article.

This is an interesting point. The information that @Patiently waiting for Truth included is true, and it does not confirm the 1970 Watchtower article. That article was wrong, and the Watchtower kept that wrong view from about 1950 to about 1980. Without admitting that this old view was wrong, the Watchtower has more recently (1984) made a correction to it, which I have included at the end of the post.

The 1970 Watchtower article that Chioke Lin quoted earlier says:

*** w70 6/1 p. 343 A New Bible Translation—Does It Honor God? ***
But French scribes did not invent the name “Jehovah.” It was in use centuries before, Raymond Martin’s Pugio Fidei using it in the form “Jehova” in the year 1270.

Here's the same wrong information repeated in 1980:

*** w80 2/1 p. 11 The Divine Name in Later Times ***
Interestingly, Raymundus Martini, a Spanish monk of the Dominican order, first rendered the divine name as “Jehova.” This form appeared in his book Pugeo Fidei, published in 1270 C.E.—over 700 years ago.

This incorrect information had been presented in further detail back in 1950. Many of the extra details are correct:

*** w50 12/1 pp. 472-474 An Open Letter to the Catholic Monsignor ***
Your quotation from the Catholic Biblical Encyclopedia says Jehovah was the incorrect pronunciation given to the Hebrew tetragrammaton JHVH in the 14th century by Porchetus de Salvaticis (1303). But let us say: The origin of the word Jehovah used to be attributed to Petrus Galatinus, a Franciscan friar, the confessor of Pope Leo X, in his De Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis, published in 1518. But the latest scholarship has proved he was not the one to introduce the pronunciation Jehovah, and neither was your aforementioned Porchetus de Salvaticis. As shown by Joseph Voisin, the learned editor of the Pugio Fidei (The Poniard of Faith) by Raymundus Martini, Jehovah had been used long before Galatinus. Even a generation before Porchetus de Salvaticis wrote his Victoria contra Judaeos (1303), the Spanish Dominican friar Raymundus Martini wrote his Pugio, about 1278, and used the name Jehovah. In fact, Porchetus took the contents of his Victoria largely from Martini’s Pugio. And Scaliger proves that Galatinus took his De Arcanis bodily from Martini’s Pugio. Galatinus did not introduce the pronunciation Jehovah, but merely defended it against those who pronounced the Hebrew tetragrammaton Jova.
In 1557 Jehovah became established in John Forster’s New Hebrew Dictionary, and Marcus Marinus admitted Jehova in his Lexicon Arca Noae of 1593. Sebastian Muenster uses the name Jehova in his text of his Latin translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (1534), and in his notes on Exodus 3:15 and 6:3 he uses the name as though it were well known. Also in 1557, in bringing out Pagninus’ Latin version of the Hebrew Scriptures, Robert Stephanus used Jehova uniformly for the Hebrew tetragrammaton. In a note on Psalm 2:1 he remarked that substituting Adonai for it was to be rejected as a Jewish superstition.
Cardinal Thomas de Vio Cajetanus in his Commentary on the Pentateuch, of 1531, regularly used Jehova. In his translation of Genesis 2:4 he has “Jehova Elohim”; and in his note on Exodus 6:3 he says: “Jehovah the God of your fathers appeared to me (Iehova Elohe patrum vestrorum visus est mihi).” To be consistent, you should call that “shallow scholarship” on the part of your cardinal, what?
But that such “shallow scholarship” is not limited to Roman Catholic clergy of the 13th to the 16th centuries, ...
The pronunciation Jahweh, usually credited to John L. Ewald of the 18th century, goes back farther, to the 16th century. Ten years before Ewald was born (1747), Jahveh was found in Eichhorn’s Simonis, the Lexicon in most general use in Germany. F. H. Gesenius adopted the pronunciation Jahveh when Ewald was still defending Jehovah.

A correction to this misinformation was made in 1984, in our publication "The Divine Name That Will Endure Forever." (Appropriately released at the time of the 1984 Reference Edition of the NWT.) In this publication, it was tacitly admitted that the monk, Raymundus Martini, had never used any form like "Jehovah" or "Iehovah" or "Jehova" or "Yehova." These forms were not generally evidenced until the 16th century, literally several centuries later.

*** na pp. 17-18 God’s Name and Bible Translators ***
In time, God’s name came back into use. In 1278 it appeared in Latin in the work Pugio fidei (Dagger of Faith), by Raymundus Martini, a Spanish monk. Raymundus Martini used the spelling Yohoua. Soon after, in 1303, Porchetus de Salvaticis completed a work entitled Victoria Porcheti adversus impios Hebraeos (Porchetus’ Victory Against the Ungodly Hebrews). In this he, too, mentioned God’s name, spelling it variously Iohouah, Iohoua and Ihouah.  Then, in 1518, Petrus Galatinus published a work entitled De arcanis catholicae veritatis (Concerning Secrets of the Universal Truth) in which he spells God’s name Iehoua.
The name first appeared in an English Bible in 1530, when William Tyndale published a translation of the first five books of the Bible.

------------

*** na p. 17 God’s Name and Bible Translators ***
In time, God’s name came back into use. In 1278 it appeared in Latin in the work Pugio fidei (Dagger of Faith), by Raymundus Martini, a Spanish monk. Raymundus Martini used the spelling Yohoua.

*** na p. 18 God’s Name and Bible Translators ***
[Picture on page 18]
God’s name in the form Yohoua appeared in 1278 in the work Pugio fidei as seen in this manuscript (dated to the 13th or 14th century) from the Ste. Geneviève library, Paris, France (folio 162b)

*** na p. 17 God’s Name and Bible Translators ***
Printings of this work dated some centuries later, however, have the divine name spelled Jehova.

21 minutes ago, BroRando said:

Many who were following Jesus Christ began to become incensed of some of his teachings and left from following him. 

This is all true, of course. I don't quite see your point, however, unless you just wanted to give another example of a non sequitur?

By the way, I have not see this happen before, but when I copied over your post where you said that John's hero was Hitler, the picture of Hitler meeting with Catholic leadership did not come across. It showed up for a few seconds under this topic, but disappeared, at least in my browser. That's probably for the best, but the space for that picture is still there and it shows up when I right click on it and try to open the link in another tab. Just so you know I didn't remove the picture of Hitler on purpose (although I wouldn't be surprised if other moderators of this site would have wanted to remove it).

Edited to add: Now it's showing up again.

 For some reason, this "topic" turned to a discussion about Yahweh vs Jehovah and Yehoshua vs Jesus, etc. I moved those posts to a topic that already existed to discuss that type of information. If you are looking for a post on that subject that you put here, I moved it over to here:

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/37538-“yahweh”-or-“jehovah”/page/4/

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/37538-“yahweh”-or-“jehovah”/page/5/'

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/37538-“yahweh”-or-“jehovah”/page/6/

50 minutes ago, BroRando said:

So if the letter J existed then. It is now correct to use the J because you were born in 1949 or that your hero committed suicide from trying to exterminate the JEWS?

You don't do it as often as others, but I notice that you fill several of your posts with complete non sequiturs and logical fallacies. These types of insults and false reasonings will only push people away from your doctrinal discussions, some of which I find quite interesting.  

51 minutes ago, BroRando said:

But who else has white supremacy tendencies before 1949 JOHN?  Adolf Hilter and the Catholic Church.  So the JEWS had no right to live before 1949?  

I'm sorry I had to point this out, but please don't embarrass yourself further. I think most people will think you handle Biblical discussions a bit better.

(Colossians 4:5, 6) ⁵ Go on walking in wisdom toward those on the outside, making the best use of your time. ⁶ Let your words always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you will know how you should answer each person.

40 minutes ago, Chioke Lin said:

Doesn't a century end on 99. How are you configuring when he died after 1284?

It's just a point of clarification.

The 12th century runs from 1100 to 1199 (more common to say 1101 to 1200). So the 13th runs from 1201 to 1300. The 1st century Christians, of course, lived in the century that ran from 1 (AD) to 100 (AD).

The 20th century ran from 1901 to 2000, and our current 21st century runs from 2001 until it runs out a few years after 2034 (just kidding on that last one).

2 minutes ago, Chioke Lin said:

Perhaps the monk I was thinking of in the 11th century is actually "Raymundo Martini" of the 12th century

Not the 11th or the 12th for this monk. Raymundo Martini was probably born in the 13th century and also died within the 13th century. Wikipedia refers to sources that support the following claim:

He was born in the first half of the 13th century at Subirats in Catalonia; and died after 1284. It is speculated that he could have been of Jewish origin. --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Martini

That second sentence might have some bearing on his interest in translating YHWH the way he did.

16 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

(isn’t there a verse on that somewhere?)

(Galatians 6:4, 5) 4 But let each one examine his own actions, and then he will have cause for rejoicing in regard to himself alone, and not in comparison with the other person. 5 For each one will carry his own load.

16 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

and you will yet live long and prosper.

That one has a verse for it, too, maybe a few:

(Deuteronomy 5:16) . . .so that you may live a long time and you may prosper . . .

(Deuteronomy 5:33) . . .that you may live and prosper and prolong your days. . .

(Acts 15:29) . . .you will prosper. Good health to you!”

(3 John 2) . . .that in all things you continue to prosper and enjoy good health. . .

3 hours ago, Patiently waiting for Truth said:

I'm still confused over the 'W' to 'V' change. YHWH - Yehovah. 

Our “English” letters have come to us through a variety of sources. Most people who learn to speak multiple languages have more acceptance about this variety. For example, you probably know that in German, a man named Johann Walters would spell his name with the J and the W and would therefore pronounce his name Yohan Valters. (But if a German word starts with a V then it is usually pronounced more like the English sound “F”.)

Many copies of the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible (LXX) were made about the time that some of the Maccabees had already campaigned against pronouncing God’s name in Hebrew or Aramaic. Curiously, the OT book of Joshua in the LXX is called the book of Jesus, because Joshua was already being spelled "Iesous." The initial letter “I” was pronounced as a “Y”. The German word for Jesus is Jesu, pronounced Yay’zoo. (As in the two English words yay! + zoo. )

Jewish persons who wrote Greek in other countries and who were outside the influence of the Maccabees campaign or other campaigns to avoid pronouncing God’s name would write it in Greek in a way that indicated it was being pronounced Ya’ho.  Even non-Hebrew writers wrote about this pronunciation as the common pronunciation among Jewish persons when Jews referred to their Hebrew God. (As in the two English words yaw + hoe.)

In English most of us don’t mind the fact that we speak of the book of “James” even though the NT Greek actually says “Iakobos” (Jacobos). But Spanish speakers will often replace this this word “Jacobos” with “Santiago” and hardly anyone is offended. Even the NWT uses “Santiago” instead of "James" or "Jaime" or "Jacobo": https://www.jw.org/es/biblioteca/biblia/biblia-estudio/libros/santiago-informacion/