JW Insider

Yes - I expected that. I think you like to look at ONE thing at a time a be absolute sure of its black and whiteness - then go to the next part. Again, I think it's the opposite. When a Western-raised person wants to talk about China, they should be willing to discuss the good, the bad and the ugly. Based on what you just said, it all seems very one-sided to you. You seem to be unwilling to address anything positive except to say that anyone who believes anything positive has been fooled. I think it's all black and white to you, because you take anything in between and find a way to move it completely over to the negative side. In fact, I realized from the start that no one would just discuss the Uyghur situation alone, because, as soon as a point is made that might be difficult to align with Western propaganda, they will merely move on to another subject. As I said before, as soon as someone shows that a claim about Uyghurs might be debunked, the conversation will be instantly turned to, 'Well, I believe anything negative that Uyghurs are saying, because . . . . Hong Kong riots, Mao, Tiananmen Square, Tibet, Three Gorges Dam, sparrows were killed, Falun Gong organ harvesting." There's a whole slew of attacks at the ready, and when one doesn't stick well, just throw more items at it. And if that isn't enough, bring up the USSR's Stalin, the failures of the French Revolution, or even Hitler!

I don't think you "discovered" anything about UN Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030, nor even UN Immigration Compact 2018. You merely listened to propagandists and conspiracy promoters who told you what sounded believable to you. The reason I say that is that you have often been asked, yet you have NEVER yet been able to point out where these ideas are in any of the official UN documents.

Communist and socialist regimes can become every bit as corrupt as other forms of government. They often cannot even be attempted without decades of civil war, which attracts alignments from the outside of those nations, often with a goal of either exacerbating, extending, or sabotaging. (The process of implementing of Chinese communism produced civil wars lasting about 30 years.) But I think you give away your instinct to simply cherry-pick anything that sounds negative about socialism, when you say what you just said about "a similar mindset under Nazi Socialism. . . with emphasis on 'socialism." In fact, the NAZI "National Socialism" had absolutely nothing to do with socialism. Socialist policies were condemned under national socialism. The party name was intended to attract wider, common support, because socialism had been associated with giving a "fair shake" to everyone. But all socialist rhetoric was dismissed when the Nazi party got into power. The Nazis stood squarely against socialism and for Western fascist imperialism.

I was really looking for more clarity from you. These conversations tend to go in a lot of different directions. I questioned the purpose of your posting the Elizabeth Economy video, because it had so little to do with any of your claims. In fact, it's a video that I might even agree with more than you do. When you told me I had missed quite a lot, and that I wasn't listening well, I realized that you weren't paying attention to to the right one of your video links, even though I identified it by quoting your own intro to the "Economy" video (page 6), and I also wrote several paragraphs in the same post specific to that video. You somehow thought I was referring to another video about water, the one where Falun Gong (via the Epoch Times) interviewed Maura Moynihan (from back on page 4). Perhaps I gave that impression. Sorry. But you gave the impression that you were so anxious to be right, that you must have barely got past the first couple sentences, before trying to make it look like I was wrong. Otherwise you would have realized that all those additional paragraphs could only have been about the video I had identified. Interesting judgments. I can't agree though. I much prefer to look at the entire picture, give everything a chance to be right, and a chance to be wrong, or a bit of both, and to see what makes the most reasonable sense when a wide array of evidence is weighed, even from perspectives and sources that are not usually considered. One should never expect a complete answer to a question to be found in "black and white" and one should never cherry-pick only the bits that fit a preconceived belief. These are tenets of discussion and belief that I have always tried to uphold. Unfortunately, conspiracists and propagandists are capable of making "proof" out of nothing. The conspiracist creates a vicious logic circle where both evidence and contradictory evidence are made to prove the same claim. Propagandists know how to mix the right amounts of correct information with the false to appeal to nationalism, racism, prejudice, etc. Even the very word propagandist is used for propagandist purposes. One country has a Press Secretary; but that country will say that the same officeholder in another country is their Chief Propagandist. But, putting conspiracy and propaganda aside, you can actually tell a lot about the value of evidence by looking at whether and how it contradicts other evidence. You can find trends in the sources of contradictory evidence. When one side or another is caught putting out false "evidence" more trends can be discovered that can help one predict the value of certain kinds of evidence. And there are times when those predictions can be tested and made even better. I agree that nations are "beasts" and can't be trusted in all things. But this also means we shouldn't always trust the false claims one beast will claim about another. We shouldn't blindly trust every untrustworthy beast that wants our trust. There are bits of truth in some of these "bad stuff in China" claims, whether historical, current, or future. But we should also never be blind to the "red dragon flags" that show up in some of the false claims about "bad stuff in China." I could start conversations with all the people I have ever hired from China, all the people I have ever worked for and worked with from China, and find a dozen more people still living in China to converse with (as my son has) and get a good feeling for what they like and don't like about their government. For many years, we also had former missionaries in our congregation from Taiwan, who knew other Witnesses on the mainland and I include their perspectives, too. If they say something positive or something that contradicts the narratives promoted by the West, you will probably claim that it shows how scared everyone is to speak out against their government. Or that the government is too good at keeping all their evil hidden. I can tell that you are steeped in propaganda, but I was too. I once believed almost everything you currently believe about China. I don't think it's easy at all to obtain and weigh the evidence correctly. I expect that most people in the West will stick with something close to the Western narratives. They are the easiest to find. I don't expect the Western rhetoric and propaganda to let up, and I therefore expect that many people will continue to feel they are doing the right thing by joining in and calling out a warning. I didn't start looking at it more closely until I realized that more of the evidence showed that the rhetoric of the Western narrative has been mostly "war propaganda" and I did not want to join in, even if it was for a "cold war."

I'm not sure how you could have "noted" this. I think you just thought it because you weren't reading carefully, or I wasn't writing carefully. If you read the previous 40 pages of this topic, a few of my opinions about 1914 should be clear enough.

Perhaps you do. Perhaps that's why I sometimes decide to take notes when listening to videos. But at least you are admitting now that what I said was correct in that she said nothing about any of those things, and that the following was accurate:

No matter what the phrase "final part of the last days" implies to you, most Witnesses, and the rest of the world, it is a meaningless phrase for defining where we are within those last days. Outta Here is showing that, if one is in the last days, it is always a true statement. If the last days could be said to start on October 4, 1914, then the final part of the last days could have started on October 5, 1914. Since we are now 38,696 days from October 4, 1914, we could divide that period into two parts, if we wished: [1st part: 1st day] [2nd part: the next 38,695 days of the last days] Therefore we can always be said to be the second part, the final part: the last days of the last days. It's a true statement, but I think all of us would agree that it is misleading if it implies that we KNOW we are in the latter half of the period known as the last days. But it doesn't say that. It's a true statement if the end comes tonight, and it's a true statement if the end comes 100 or 1,000 years from now. Some would say it's about the same as when Paul said: (Romans 13:11, NIV): The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The difference is that Paul's statement is not misleading. Because he is referring to a salvation that can be made sure if we have lived our life and fought the fine fight to the finish, or if the Parousia/Judgment arrives before the end of our lives. The expression "final part of the last days" or "last days of the last days" is misleading in that it implies that we are at least in the latter half of the last days, without saying it. It makes an implication, but has a loophole. So it's a true statement, even if the end comes 1,000 years from now. But the persons using this phrase are implying that they KNOW it is less than 106 years from now, because they are implying that we are at least in the latter half of the last days. We are all pretty sure that the last days can't go on for another 106 years, so that it is an expression of belief that few would deny, but no one can say that they absolutely KNOW this. When this phrase was used in 1967, we were 53 years from October 1914. We are now another 53 years from 1967. We will soon know if we were even in the latter half of the last days, as the Watchtower defines them. *** w67 4/1 p. 197 How We Know We Live in the “Last Days” *** When the many factors are put together, we find that our generation, our day is the one that is identified in the Bible as the “last days.” In fact, in this year 1967 we are actually living in the final part of that time! This can be compared to, not just the last day of a week, but, rather, the last part of that last day. That was much more misleading in that it split the last days into 7 equal parts, and said we were in the last part of the 7th part. ---------------------- ** edited to add: Just to show how sure of himself the writer was (in 1967), even if the 7th equal part of the last days had just started, on April 1, 1967, then those equal parts were a maximum of 3,195 days long apiece, which worked out to be the equivalent of a prediction that the very end of the last days was April 1, 1967 + 3,195 days = December 30, 1975, at the latest. Day 1 of the "week" of the last days: Oct. 4, 1914 to July 3, 1923 Day 2 of the "week" of the last days: July 4, 1923 to Apr. 2, 1932 ... ... Day 7 of the "week" of the last days: April 1, 1967 to Dec. 30, 1975. This helps explain the wording of this article just a few months later, in 1968, which indicated that the "end of 6,000 years" would come only weeks or months, not years after [October] 1975: *** w68 8/15 pp. 499-500 pars. 30-33 Why Are You Looking Forward to 1975? *** Our chronology, however, which is reasonably accurate (but admittedly not infallible), at the best only points to the autumn of 1975 as the end of 6,000 years of man’s existence on earth. It does not necessarily mean that 1975 marks the end of the first 6,000 years of Jehovah’s seventh creative “day.” ... And yet the end of that sixth creative “day” could end within the same Gregorian calendar year of Adam’s creation. It may involve only a difference of weeks or months, not years. ... Exactly how soon after Adam’s creation is not disclosed. ... After the sixth creative day ends, the seventh one begins. 33 This time between Adam’s creation and the beginning of the seventh day, the day of rest, let it be noted, need not have been a long time. It could have been a rather short one. The naming of the animals by Adam, and his discovery that there was no complement for himself, required no great length of time. The animals were in subjection to Adam; they were peaceful; they came under God’s leading; they were not needing to be chased down and caught. It took Noah only seven days to get the same kinds of animals, male and female, into the Ark. (Gen. 7:1-4) Eve’s creation was quickly accomplished, ‘while Adam was sleeping.’ (Gen. 2:21) So the lapse of time between Adam’s creation and the end of the sixth creative day, though unknown, was a comparatively short period of time.

I think it's also fair to point out that most of the persons at these educational facilities appear to be male between the ages of about 18 to about 35. Just today I saw someone claim (on Instagram) that the number of Uyghurs being tortured and "slaughtered" in concentration camps is about "three million." Three million is higher than the entire population of Uyghur males in that age range in the entire province. Therefore these very few Google Earth facilities would actually be expected to take up about half the entire populated areas of real estate of the entire province to handle even a million. Yet this Google Earth "proof" shows very few of these relatively small facilities amidst large populated areas, and no one seems to notice the discrepancy. If the Western rumors were true, we'd see 100 times the number of these facilities, and they'd be taking up nearly entire cities. It should also be pointed out that there are at least a million Chinese Muslims of other ethnic backgrounds in other parts of China, many of whom also travel inside and outside China.

As mentioned above, there is a very interesting review of the BBC's report on the Uyghur situation here: a recent video report on Xinjiang by John Sudworth of the BBC . The link to the original report is here: “Inside China’s ‘thought transformation’ camps — BBC News” The fascinating expose of the BBC propaganda in the report is here: https://medium.com/@sunfeiyang/breaking-down-the-bbcs-visit-to-hotan-xinjiang-e284934a7aab I'd love to quote the whole thing, and include all the pictures, but I'll quote enough so that some might have enough interest to look. The numbers are the time locations in the video. My own comments will be inside brackets [like this]: ---------------- [Commenter points out that as they get closer to the facility, the blue sky just shown from outside the facility is made darker and darker and the music turns ominous] 1:04–1:42 Sudworth can barely contain his condescension here, letting you the viewer know that the Chinese government would have you believe that these dancers shown are just students and came here willingly! ... The camera then pans away from the ongoing dance practice to focus on a surveillance camera visible through the window. The implication is clear, though a bit rich coming from the British, who boast the world’s highest ratio of surveillance cameras to people. ... 1:42–2:42 Now here we start to get to even more egregious BBC editing — when a dancer is asked if he came to the school willingly, he replies yes, he previously had extremist views, and says that a village policeman said to him, 这么好的学校，你可以去参加，转化自己的思想 — which translates to “what a great school (that is), you can enroll there, and change your worldview/ideas”. This is glossed as “a policeman told me to get enrolled”, turning a suggestion into a directive. [Although BBC didn't clearly point it out, the "Chinese officials" running the school are also Uyghurs.] They then take us through a variety of classes — ending with a peek over a guy’s shoulder as he types. “I love the Communist Party of China”, Sudworth intones solemnly. There’s a lot more visible on that page, including “I love Hotan”, and the classic Chinese children’s song “I love Beijing Tiananmen”. None of these would be out of place in any school outside of Xinjiang, but Sudworth is counting on you not knowing that. In any case, Mandarin is an important skill to have in China, but it also should not come at the expense of Uyghur and other languages, which is why it’s good to see that both are being utilized here, with instruction in other classes still done in Uyghur. [The commenter also points out how both Mandarin and Uyghur script are written on the wall of the school room.] 2:43–3:56 Sudworth begins this section with a monologue of how terrible the place is, with the following observations: they have to wear uniforms ([as if] adults never wear uniforms willingly) they don’t go home at night (remember this one, we’re coming back to it) they sleep in dorms and have communal toilets (with a nice shot of a squat toilet to remind everyone how uncivilized Easterners are) Now that the BBC has you properly outraged, we have a short interview with Mahemuti, an Uyghur instructor working at the facility. Mahemuti reiterates that people are there willingly, but Sudsworth is undeterred: “Doesn’t a place where people have to come, obey the rules, stay until you allow them to leave, sound more like a prison?” he continues. Putting aside the fact that you have to “obey the rules” even if you’re in a McDonalds, no proof is offered that people are not there willingly — the dancer they interviewed previously said as much as well, but both are ignored because the BBC is sure they’re lying. [Earlier when a person was asked if could come and go willingly, he apparently said "Yes. Exactly." But the segment was boggled so that they conflated it with a policeman supposedly directing him to go to this school.] ... 3:56–5:25 Here we get a series of Google Earth images purporting to show new facilities built in Xinjiang (much like the one they visited). I’ve captured one at 4:05 that has a noticeable sports field. At 4:40 in the video, they then claim that for the place they visited, the sports facilities were “hastily added” before their tour. But why do other places they showed earlier have sports fields too? Did BBC journalists visit all of them and that’s why they had to hastily build them? Sudsworth also notes that barbed wire and fences make these places feel unlike schools. But high fences are normal for schools all across China, and security is tight at each of them. Maybe barbed wire isn’t very classy, but plenty of school facilities in the West have them as well. You wouldn’t be shocked to see armed police officers (we call them “student resource officers” here though) in a US school either. [The commenter adds a picture of a barbed wire fence around a US school, and I should add that it's also found right here along the fences of the high school in New York.] ... BBC aren’t the first people to suddenly become Google Earth experts. UBC student Shawn Zhang tried to use Google Earth to claim a historical mosque had been demolished (Keriya Aitika Mosque) using satellite images, but later had to retract his claim because he was literally staring at the wrong building on his screen. 5:25–7:50 The crux of the BBC’s argument is here, the interview with Kazakhstan resident Rakhima Senbay. She claims to have been in the camps before and it was far more brutal than what we’ve seen, beatings, etc. ... Rakhima Senbay isn’t a famous dissident like Enver Tohti (a Google search for her turns up the same “ Rakhima Senbay, who now lives in Kazakhstan but says she spent a year in the camp — simply because she had WhatsApp on her phone” line multiple times), but she’s also the only real evidence the BBC has to support their claims. 7:52–8:39 We have some more interesting interviews here with some higher-ups, discussing the philosophy behind the facilities. The first guy talks about the preventative nature of vocational training and education — giving people the skills to succeed instead of waiting for a crime to be committed and then applying punishment. His example of hyperbolic, but the second person makes it clear we’re talking about minor offenses. Sudsworth claims in the monologue prior to the interviews that some people “have not been charged with a crime”, but Xu, the second interviewee, mentions that many people have committed criminal offenses, albeit minor ones — hence the focus on training and rehabilitation instead of punishment. NPR’s previous article on Xinjiang gave examples of these, such as a man who forced his wife to stay home and quit her job. It’s these types of social pressures that these programs are trying to eliminate. This segment is spun as China doing a Minority Report-esque PRE-CRIME program — and the model here is certainly open to discussion and criticism, but on the face it seems far more reasonable than something like California’s Three Strikes law. Instead of punishment or prison, minor offenders are offered training, making reintegration easier. It’s unclear what proportion of people there as an alternative to prison or simply there just to capitalize on vocational training. This is information that I’d be very interested in, but the BBC didn’t think to ask. All in all, if this model of rehabilitation through vocational training centers was applied in the US, it’d be called left-wing extremism and being “soft” on crime. Where I live, a man was given a 10 year prison sentence for stealing $33 worth of underwear. Imagine if instead of prison, he was given training for a few months and then reintegrated into society, instead of locked away for an entire decade. ... When Buayxiam (another Uyghur instructor) tells him about how their goal is also to get rid of religious extremism, she’s met with a very solemn WE CALL THAT BRAINWASHING from Sudsworth. [Commenter points out how the BBC editors cleverly manage an awkwardly angled picture of a person under a hairdryer at this point when brainwashing is mentioned, as if under a real brainwashing machine.] What should be done then? If there are Chinese citizens who subscribe to jihadist ideologies, shouldn’t an attempt be made to change their minds? Is that brainwashing? 9:34–End Sudworth is told by the principal that students go home once a week (hey kinda like the weekend happens “once a week”), and shows us an empty courtyard when students should be leaving. ... Regardless, we soon get to see people leave in the video. Sudsworth tells us that they come back to the facility uninvited the next day only to be surprised that there are students lining up waiting for the bus home. The bus soon arrives, and instead of acknowledging that they were wrong about students going home, Sudworth instead tries to call it a “testament to the scale of the operation”. Do you ever see a school bus or a shuttle taking people to a hotel and marvel at the “scale of the operation”? Finally, Sudsworth claims the bus “disappears into a government compound”, but it appears to just be a central location for the bus to drop people off, as everyone soon emerges. The narrator tells us that they “finally are given freedom of the night for a few hours”. This section is what really calls into question the credibility of the entire video. Early on, they claimed *without any evidence* that no one was allowed to leave, taking great pains to highlight the cameras, the “watch towers”, the fences, etc., but when they make a surprise visit (which they couldn’t have anticipated and put on some sort of facade) they see the whole normal process unfold before their eyes — a bus comes and picks people up, drops them off at their home, and everyone gets off and goes home, presumably for the weekend. Xinjiang is a large place and villages are very spread out. Boarding schools are simply an easier way to manage training when everyone is spread out — transportation back and forth is provided, but having people come to Hotan from remote areas is simply efficiency. Go to Sichuan, Jiangxi, anywhere else in China, and you’ll find boarding schools. The images of the dormitories we’re shown, the toilets and beds, they’re not that different from the facilities at Chinese colleges either. Final Thoughts While I clearly have my contentions with the narrator of this video, I’m glad that the BBC was able to visit. We saw a good faith effort to provide a variety of tangible, useful vocational skills training (Mandarin, hospitality service, art, performance, and barber training), decent facilities (pickup basketball by students), Uyghur-led instruction, and efficient transportation to get students there and back. The more I see of these facilities, the better they look. It’s easy to make assumptions about a top down Google Earth image, less so when the scariest thing the BBC could show me was a bathroom with the lights off.

Not if the original report was made up as an assumed extrapolation from interviews with 8 or fewer interviewees living 1,000 miles from China (and from someone who claims he is doing this for God and for apocalypse), and subsequent reports keep playing off reports from the same original madman, imo, Adrian Zenz. Sure, when the idea caught on as a thing to be against, then lots of people are going to pick up on it and try to make it provable through some kind of evidence. But you'll notice that it requires a lot of loaded words to make sure that this gets picked up by other groups to make sure they are incensed enough to jump on the bandwagon. Even using the term "camps" is intentionally meant to conjure up the the phrase "concentration camps." Obviously, they are not camps, nor are they anything like camps. The article here, in the NYT, which is guilty of several mistranslations, also uses this phrase: Tactics from Turpan City for answering questions asked by the children of concentrated education and training school students Does anyone think the term "concentrated education" is in the original? In this sense it's about how these schools are centralized not about concentrated education. However, what China is doing really is is in response to the stabbings and bombings and violent riots by radicalized religious extremists. It's for those people who try to rally others to join in running off to Syria, Turkey and other parts of the Middle East to join "Al-Qaeda" and "ISIS," or who distribute pro-Jihadist materials, or who give or attend rallies and speeches that incite radicalization. People think that these facilities were hidden, and denied, then only admitted after pressure. That's completely false. There really are prisons for radicalized Muslims and China is very proud of these. They aren't hidden, but are talked about openly in the media daily. Many Muslim countries have visited and ALL of these countries have praised China for this particular method of handling Muslim extremism. Rather than locking up everyone in a standard prison (unless they have actually killed someone) this method makes use of these less prison-like educational facilities which double as vocational schools and people can even go to them voluntarily. I don't doubt that such schools might include a fair bit of pro-government ideology, since we know that this is true of Chinese elementary schools. The narrative created out of Google Earth images is worthless. They find a new facility, maybe even a new prison built somewhere and immediately claim it must be proof of Uyghur "concentration camp" facilities. And of course you cannot see the claimed activities from Google Earth. Also, so many of the supposed closer images have been debunked. Regular prisons have been shown from other places in China and called Uyghur. A barbed wire fence near Shanghai is shown and it is called Uyghur. A Nike factory in Indonesia is shown and it is called Uyghur. There is a very interesting review of the BBC's report on the Uyghur situation here: https://medium.com/@sunfeiyang/breaking-down-the-bbcs-visit-to-hotan-xinjiang-e284934a7aab The BBC apparently relies on the idea that few people with the will to debunk the BBC speak Chinese. They also evidently hope that people will just believe BBC propaganda and not think clearly about what they just saw. I'll make some points about it or quote it at more length in another post.

No. I'm talking about the video you posted with the WP journalist interviewing Elizabeth Economy, China expert who has worked on the Council on Foreign Relations.

Are you sure this was the interview you intended to post? I listened (and took notes) on the entire interview. It presents nothing about organ harvesting, nothing about Tibet (except to indicate that all boundary issues have been resolved between China and Tibet), nothing about control of water, nothing about Falun Gong, nothing about Uyghurs, nothing about problems in Mongolia, and almost nothing about problems in Africa, HK and Taiwan. China is presented merely as an ambitious economic power well on its way to becoming the number one economic power, which the West sees as a threat that must be controlled somehow. When she says that all border disputes are now resolved except for some tensions with India, it's the Washington Post interviewer that has to remind her that the South China Sea fishing still results in border disputes. Although it's an attempt to imply otherwise, it really shows that there is nothing revolutionary about Xi, and admits that China's political situation is a "black box" that they really know very little about, and that most of the conclusions they have reached were based on rumors. When either of them went to China, they apparently got their information through meetings with intellectual elites. It's true that they try to paint Xi as someone more ambitious than Deng in terms of power consolidation, but even this is based on rumors surrounding the meaning of the idea that Xi is at the "core" of the party. If you look elsewhere, the idea that Xi is asking for fealty to both himself and the party is little more than a Western interpretation of what it means to say that Xi is at the "core" of the party. You can hear that the WP reporter is well aware that this interpretation is about the meaning of "core." When the Economist magazine wanted to make this same point, its reasoning displayed the same weakness, and they slyly turned all statements of loyalty to the party as "fealty" to Xi himself: Over the past few months a parade of dignitaries has professed undying allegiance to Mr Xi and the Communist Party he leads. The trigger was a party decision in October to anoint Mr Xi as the “core” of the leadership. Soon afterwards, his six colleagues in the Politburo’s Standing Committee began laying on the flattery with a trowel. In March one of the committee’s members, Yu Zhengsheng, said Mr Xi’s status as core reflected “the fundamental interests of the party and people”. Such statements remind many observers of the adulation once accorded to Mao Zedong. Wow! One of the six Politburo Committee actually said that about his status as "core"? And this is the strongest one of the six they could quote? Of course, the point could be at least partly true, and I wouldn't be surprised. But it's comical how little evidence was shown as "proof" before using it as a firm foundation for some political punditry. And if that's all one needs as evidence, Trump would be a Napoleonic dictator (which he is but only in limited ways, imo). In the United States, millions of people carry images of their political candidate on their T-shirts, or their leader's slogans on their hats, cars, coffee cups, etc. This is considered cult fealty if seen in other countries. I also thought it was funny that they both were ready to say that the trading ports which China has helped to build, upgrade and open up in many countries, (76 ports in 35 countries) especially countries in Africa were billed as non-military, but then, look, here comes a visit by a a Chinese navy ship! (They didn't say how many ports were visited, and said it in a way that showed they weren't ready to say it was even more than one or two, but the clear intent was to imply that this suddenly turns them into "Chinese military bases." At least they didn't embarrass themselves by belaboring this point. Also, the US has like 800 actual military bases where actual active weapons and bombs remain permanently.) On the whole, I agree with the approach of the interview. It was very balanced, and surprisingly had absolutely nothing to say about supposed Chinese aggression and violence and atrocities that many sources push. Xi is treated as a political and economic figure, and China is treated the same. There were none of the typical attempts to drop even a hint that civil rights atrocities were ongoing. They did talk about a lot of arrests for corruption that Xi is known to have initiated, but this was treated as an actual valid anti-corruption campaign. In other places I have seen that these cases were numerous, but necessary, as many areas of China were lax in reigning in officials who cheat, and defraud and try to enrich themselves by taking advantage of the poor. (On that point, I noticed that she apparently agreed that Xi was well on his way to raising the remaining few million out of poverty, that China owns only 5% of US debt, same as Japan, that China only takes over only a 2% interest in entrepreneurial companies, etc. )

Governments typically don't get along very well. They act selfishly in their own interests, and especially in the interests of the elites who try to control them. They don't acknowledge the benefits of God's kingdom, nor do they give credit to the moral guidance of the Bible that, if followed, could result in better government, better equitable treatment of the poor, better distribution of resources, and employment in projects that improve standards of living, better health, better treatment of the sick, less infant mortality, longer lifespans, etc. But even when officials running governments are non-believers, or sincerely believe in a separation of church and state, how would these governments show they are wanting to do the right thing, if this were possible? What would governments of today be doing if they really wanted to work together to solve the most pressing problems facing the world today? How might they take advantage of positive or useful entities already in place? How would they show that they cared for the populations under their jurisdictions? Even if it were just a matter of showing common sense, without bringing religion into the picture, how could they show whether they were acting selfishly or actually had the best interests of their citizens? If the Governing Body were tasked with writing a 100-page document to answer those questions, I think they would probably come up with something nearly identical to "Agenda 21." I just finally skimmed all of it, and finished reading the majority of it. This is a common-sense document that would even match the best practices that Witnesses would love to see followed in a post-Armageddon world. I found NOTHING in the document that doesn't seem like it could have come from a very intelligent committee of Jehovah's Witnesses. In fact, I don't really think there is anything in it that you personally would strongly disagree with. There are a couple of things I would have done differently, and you too, I'm sure. But I think that most everyone here would think of it as an excellent document. I am definitely pro-Agenda21, after reading almost all of it. If you are not, please find something in it to show me why: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf

I've given examples before, and any others I know I will keep to myself. But your take is quite reasonable in the overall post. I like that you can give some benefit of the doubt even if you are pretty sure things can be done differently. I think this is the right attitude for almost everything. Your first instincts have probably been better than some of the counsel you get from others. I liked Vic Vomidog much better before the name change. And Anna might've liked the idea of representing the BV's as cumbersome family household teraphim. For me, though, it was like a bur in the saddle.

This was his opinion. Mine is that something big could be about to happen at any time, with or without a lockdown. It could happen in dire times, or during times when people are taking note of relative peace and security.

It's not fair to label every new religion a "cult" just to make use of the pejorative connotations. Obviously, this has been used against us, too, and against many religions which were "new" at some point in time. I use it here for the negative connotations, of course. For purposes of this discussion, the important thing is whether the leader of a new religion is able to tell lies that followers will believe without question, even when those lies have resulted in harm or death to those same followers. The followers do not necessarily know the leader is telling lies, of course, but as evidence mounts up, the followers are such strong believers in their leader that they have been able to avoid/deny the questions about harm or death. In other words, the leader's lies are accepted as truth against the cognitive dissonance that followers are actually being harmed or killed. So, does Falun Gong believe some crackpot ideas? Sure. But that's not what makes me use the term cult. The beliefs of most religions seem like crackpot ideas to some other religion, even the idea that God needed a human sacrifice to release us from the bondage of Adam's sin. And giving all one's spare time to volunteering for projects that promote Falun Gong does not make it a cult either. However, can we show that Falun Gong's leader has told obvious dangerous untruths? Yes. And this does not depend on what other people ("enemies") have said about this leader, but what he himself has said. Can we show that at least one of those lies unnecessarily results in harm or death to followers? Yes. (Of course, the primary one is the lie about curing cancer and other diseases with exercises alone, and the claim that using human medicine to help with disease is not effective and shows a lack of faith.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/wellness/2001/11/20/falun-gong-whats-behind-the-movements/65f601dc-608a-452d-a6bd-6b7522af3cbf/ Now, when a person is willing to lie to followers to keep a leadership position, we can work from that point and look at the reasons people will tell this kind of lie: money, ego, extreme negative religious or political ideology. I say extreme negative because few people would really say God wants them to lie for a cause, but they might easily say that God is OK with them lying for a cause AGAINST something, because the end justifies the means. Turns out that extreme political ideology against so-called "evil regimes" is also the best explanation for why Reagan, Bush I and Clinton and the CIA told absolute lies related to foreign policy objectives against "enemies." We now know from documentation that they made false claims enemies all the while knowing that these claims were not true. In a few years, I'm sure we could have the same type of documentary evidence already claimed against Bush II, Obama, Trump, etc. Telling the most vicious kinds of lies against an enemy is actually a typical political tactic, but it can also be documented in religious circles. For example, if you have an interest in Dr. Massimo Introvigne, watch what he says here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBj-9iLiL-s) about the famous Mormon attacker, "Ex Temple Mormon," Bill Schnoebelen. Then, to get a glimpse of what Schnoebelen claimed about the Mormons, try here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-dQvdotiKI Of course, if someone says that reptile like creatures on two legs walk in the basements of the Mormon Temples, there are many who would eat that up and start spreading it far and wide. And if you really believe it's true, you should do this. I think there are groups like those behind Bitter Winter who feel they must speak up because the vicious claims seem true. But Dr. Massimo Introvigne has to very carefully show why he has come to believe that men like Schnoebelen are pathological liars, even though it ruins the favorite beliefs some had about devil worship going on in Mormon Temples. Men like the leader of Falun Gong and Adrian Zenz, the people behind claims of organ harvesting of millions and Uyghur torture of millions, are exactly the same kind of racist, hateful fundamentalist liars that Schnoebelen is. They all believe they are lying for the greater good, for God! And there will always be people to eat up these lies. Just like the followers of Falun Gong, when they see how some of these lies don't make sense, they will shift to other claims which may or may not be totally true. If someone doesn't believe that people are being killed by taking out their organs when they are alive, then they will shift to: it must be true because look how China tries to control water, or fishing, or language teaching, or coronavirus, or terrorism in HK, etc., etc., etc. Or look how many people Mao "murdered" by mismanaging a famine. Many won't seem to notice that some of these arguments become circular, or some are even contradictory. (Like: China is murdering Uyghurs so that there will be no problems from Uyghurs when the BRI goes through the Uyghur province. (?!?!) Or, Jehovah's Witnesses in China are jailed for conscientious objection, therefore if FG claims that FG followers are being murdered for organ harvesting, then it must be true. Or, China is the second largest economy in the world, and might soon be the largest economy in the world, and it was well on its way toward a primary goal for this year to raise all Han Chinese and minority Chinese out of poverty; therefore it makes sense that they have a brisk industry selling body parts even to people from outside China who go travel to China on a secret "organ transplant" visa. )

My sister lived with her Danish husband in a beautiful island about an hour's (expensive) commute from Copenhagen, where his family has lived for many generations. She had 10 years of Danish lessons before she could get citizenship. But they are back in the United States now, and moved to the Seattle area, of all places, just in time for Corona and riots. His work for telecommunications companies has always been solid, and has easily moved jobs among big telcoms. But he says people are being laid off right in the middle of the biggest telcom changes, when big upgrades are needed more than ever. Necessary upgrade projects are being put on hold.

I talked to a friend who says the lock downs at Patterson Bethel are very depressing. He is not someone who would have any influence on teachings but he says that there are many whispers of this type of thinking that you (@Arauna) have shared. How could all the Bethel be in lockdown (earthwide) without something really big about to happen? He only gets about an hour outside his room every day, and he thinks there is something big planned for the first of October. Perhaps a big meeting. Some think it's an exciting announcement, and some think it's a hint that they are letting people go. As it is, he has very little to do. All Caleb/Sophia videos have been completed up through the end of next year, and he and several others literally have nothing to do right now. Just waiting. He says that brothers in the legal department (some still sharing space there) are saying that KH's up for sale just aren't selling, and that big checks go out daily for "you know what," but with a lot less contributions coming in already. Brothers and sisters are beginning to (unofficially) shift their congregations through Zoom to join congregations half-way across the country, which they had moved away from for employment, etc. "This must be it!" he says. And of course, I'm all for it. Whenever it is Jehovah's time, he will move things in his own way. Of course, I still think that what happens does not need to wait on anything more specific "coming upon all those dwelling upon the face of the whole earth." We already say that what happened in 1914 came upon all those dwelling upon the face of the whole earth, in the sense of a change in the direction of history: "the year that changed the world." But I'm still of the opinion that what comes upon the face of the whole world needn't wait for anything specific beforehand. All these things might happen, but there is no reason to claim that such things must happen. The actual end comes upon the whole earth as a surprise, even if we are sure this must be the season. Anyway, I tried to cheer him up by telling him how each congregation has a different personality, and that I have seen a lot of joy come through the use of Zoom in the congregations. I attended a couple "funerals" recently that were attended by brothers and sisters from all over the country, who would never have been able to attend otherwise. And in each case the Zoom was left on for about 45 minutes after the memorial talk and small, "break-out" groups of us chatted and reminisced and got to see others we hadn't seen in many years. Some congregations are losing "headcount" but others, like ours, had a new peak in auxiliary pioneers (special hours for CO visit, and circuit assembly months). Everybody wants to see one another, which is great, but so far we are doing fine in our congregation.

This is more and more true as the world gets more divided, more partisan, and more nationalistic. Pride in one's own cause, nation, religion or ideology causes one to be more apt to defend one's POV with bias, and condemn, with bias, those of an "opposite" POV . It happens to the best of us, and by that I mean that there have been several documented examples even within and among our own religion. Even sites that rarely say anything good about JWs have acknowledged this. It's not unrelated to the topic, so I'll include one article here: Here is https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20191108/ecc-exhibit-tells-stories-of-lesser-known-holocaust-victims (My father was born in Elgin, btw) ECC exhibit tells stories of lesser-known Holocaust victims When remembering the Holocaust, what immediately comes to mind is the genocide of six million Jewish people killed across Europe by the fascist Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. But there were an estimated five million non-Jewish people also killed by the Nazis for their race, beliefs or occupation during World War II. Created by the Arnold-Liebster Foundation, the exhibit highlights the relatively unknown stories of persecution endured by that faith community in Nazi-occupied Europe. Among them is the story of 89-year-old Holocaust survivor and foundation co-founder Simone Arnold Liebster of France. A Jehovah's Witness, Arnold Liebster was 12 when she was sent to a Nazi re-education camp for refusing to hail Hitler at her girls' school. She was held in the camp for two years, while her parents were sent to concentration camps. ECC assistant English professor Ginger Alms was inspired to bring the exhibit to the college after her students read Arnold Liebster's memoir and Alms came across the foundation's work to chronicle the struggles of these lesser-known Holocaust victims. "It's little-known history and I was really inspired by Simone," Alms said. The exhibit features 12 story panels with information and images about the conditions faced by Jehovah's Witnesses during that period. It's a replica of an exhibit designed for the Holocaust museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, said Greg Milakovich, a foundation representative. "We highlighted four things that make the experiences of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany significant to understand," Milakovich said. • They refused to hail Hitler and their religion was banned. • They were put in concentration camps as early as 1934. • They were identified with their own insignia -- a purple triangle -- on their camp uniforms. • They were asked to sign a declaration renouncing their faith and denouncing other members of the religion, and join the German military. Jehovah's Witnesses raised many red flags in the early days of Hitler's rise by speaking out against Nazism, documenting and reporting the existence of and conditions within concentration camps, and distributing literature about it, Milakovich said. They published diagrams of camps and smuggled information about them to the outside world, raising the alarm about poison gas experiments and the systematic destruction of Jews in Poland. Jehovah's Witnesses distributed more than 200,000 leaflets during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. "Germany was on display in all of its glory, but it was a front because all these things were going on," Milakovich said.

I just lost a much-too-long writeup on the first 15-20 minutes. I can give several examples to show how this is mostly a propaganda piece with a lot of good true information, and a lot of shots taken at the CCP, of course. Some of these criticisms are likely correct, but almost all of them have parallels in the United States that are much worse here. I came back here to my computer every hour or so to listen to another few minutes of the interview and comment. I'll probably wait until I finish the whole thing sometime tonight or tomorrow before attempting to comment again. For some reason, when I got back to the page, these two images were still here. One was to show how all that apocalyptic emphasis on the Three Gorges Dam was always implied to be part of the "yoking and choking" of the Yahgtze River in Tibet, yet the dam is closer to Beijing than to most of the water sources in Tibet. The other was to draw a parallel to the article's statement, "After the Chinese Communist Party occupied Tibet, it has essentially monopolized these waters, according to longtime China and Tibet watcher Maura Moynihan." That's a lot like saying, "After the American Capitalists occupied Mexico, in Colorado, Texas, California, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, it has essentially monopolized the waters of the Red, Colorado and Rio Grande Rivers. Also, I remember picking up a picture that showed that the square miles of the Dam and reservoir are actually only about 419 square miles. The TVA took land from 80,000 square miles of residents in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, etc., including some good friends of ours, from a large Witness family, now in Missouri, who (in 1934) lost about 3,000 acres and were compensated for only about 300 of them. There was also information about the "clear cuts" of Tibet timber her mention that this was millions of acres, which I believe because Alaska has been in a similar situation of millions of acres of clear cuts of timber with about 5 million more acres wanted freed for timber by Trump out of 10 million that forestry services want to preserve. (A lot of recent anti-Trump rhetoric regarding Alaska was actually the same under Obama, but less publicized.)

I have already made it clear several times that you cannot trust all pro-China articles and you cannot trust all anti-China articles. I also said that that Falun Gong (Epoch Times, NTD, etc) CAN be trusted to write many good, truthful, reasonable articles. When it comes to reports from governments, it's a lot of work, but you can start out by NOT trusting any of them to tell the truth fully. Then you can look at what each side admits about the other side that you might not expect. Then you can start looking at the various goals and trends which are often admitted in related interviews. Then look for inconsistencies, mistranslations, the direction of their spin when compared with evidence. Look to see if quoted documents actually say what is being claimed. Look at the actual sources, not just commentaries about those sources. When you can find items that actual evidence contradicts, or catch either side in actual lies, then look again at the trends and direction of these lies; look for common themes. Look to see if these common themes have been obvious in previous propaganda and spin. Double-check if these new types of lies, or if they are they the same types of lies that have been used to effect national goals before. No problem. I already expect her to be very believable, and expect a lot of truth in her statements and claims, even before I begin listening. Perhaps the whole thing is 100% correct and unbiased.

Except that this news item isn't really from Hong Kong. It is from Falun Gong in NYC. The first thing to do is look at the earliest source of this statement. I find it at NTD.com. Look at their copyright page at ntd.com: If you prefer to contact us via postal mail or email you may do so: Epoch Times Inc. 229 W 28th St, 6th Floor New York, NY 10001-5905 Email: copyright@ntdtv.com I am surprised that with hundreds of thousands protesting amidst violence and even documented terrorism on video, that only 289 are being reported here as arrested, and only ONE of those 289 was associated with charges of spreading pro-independence slogans (but was evidently primarily arrested for assault). By comparison, in NYC, not even a tenth of that number protested, and yet thousands were arrested and detained, most for only 24 hours, and mostly for unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct. Here is the NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/nyregion/nyc-protests-jail.html So far, more than 2,000 people [in New York City] have been arrested on charges such as disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, unlawful assembly, assault on a police officer and burglary, according to the police and prosecutors. Most were released with a desk appearance ticket, which requires them to return to court at a later date. And yet more and more it is clear that some of the Hong Kong inciters of the terrorism and separatism have been meeting with US officials including CIA and CIA funded organizations, one of them even meeting with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo himself -- multiple times. Even the above Falun Gong source of the article about HK arrests admits this about billionaire Jimmy Lei: His case comes after he was arrested for suspected collusion with foreign forces on Aug. 10, making him the highest profile person to be arrested under the Beijing imposed law. The 71-year-old had been a frequent visitor to Washington, where he met officials including U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to rally support for Hong Kong democracy, prompting Beijing to label him a “traitor.”

No. I would agree it's not important. Also, I should mention that I don't believe there was ever any good evidence for the idea that the two tablets were merely copies of each other. The general impression I get, reading it since then, is that it's more likely that two tablets contained 10 commandments, meaning that there was an average of 2.5 commandments on each of the 4 sides. (Likely 3 + 3 + 2 + 2, or 3 + 2 + 3 + 2, assuming the tablets had about the same number of characters on each, and the tablets were about the same size.) If there is anything important about this fact, it might be that it implies that the letters were of a large, highly visible size that a human like Moses would not normally be able to chisel. It might also imply the simplicity of the basic law, and yet the burden or weight it imposed on imperfect humans. Or it could imply not just the "weightiness" but the lasting character of the law covenant. (Larger inscriptions take longer to be weathered away.) Or the hand of Jehovah was not to be misinterpreted by trying to interpret small letters among small cracks and contours of natural stone. The interpretation of His words was "solid." Anyway, those are just guesses, of course, about why it might have been important at the time. But these particular tablets didn't last long, and we don't know how perfectly Moses matched the copies.

It is not emphasized as much, but that doesn't mean that the teaching is gone. Removing this teaching altogether would be a huge undertaking. It is not specifically mentioned as much in the Watchtower, or in most of the study publications. It has moved to a smaller coverage in an "appendix" of a major publication that once had a chapter that defended it. My point was not that it is about to be dropped completely. I would never expect to see 1914 completely dropped before 2035, and even you believe that the end may come before that year. What I would expect is a few more parables and prophecies that have been tied to 1914, which will soon be tied to years like 33 CE, 70 C.E., around 100 C.E., 1919 C.E., perhaps even dates between 2013 and 2020 based on re-emphasis on the King of the North, new threats, new signs, etc. A few changes in this direction have already been made in the last few years. The doubled generation solves the biggest problem for most, but the "back-pocket" idea that 120 years from 1914 = 2034 will not be specifically discounted until that date is passed. At that point, assuming this system is still in place, a revisit of the doubled generation will seem flimsy even though it could technically carry the doctrine out for another few decades beyond 2034. We've had years where 1914 was mentioned in dozens of different places in the same year, but I expect those days are already gone. Two or three times a year is about all we can expect now because it no longer has an upbuilding, encouraging effect, even if it is true.

Amnesty International has been caught in promoting much more American propaganda than Human Rights Watch, for example, but this does not mean that any one story is either true or untrue. For example, the YouTube video you just showed about Agenda 21/2030 relied partly on Sputnik/ANI for presentation of sources that fit the agenda of the interview. One can find all kinds of claims that Russia's Sputnik news, for example, is full of fake news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_(news_agency) Lee Stranahan was hired by Sputnik News after his departure from Breitbart News and, according to The Washington Post, he is Sputnik's most visible Trump supporter".[37][38][39][40] In early 2020, at the time of the Impeachment of President Trump, Stanahan stated "the entire impeachment is a lie.”[25] The Washington Post stated that "many Sputnik hosts profess skepticism that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election," in contradiction to the assessment of the US intelligence community.[37] But that doesn't mean every article is false. It doesn't mean that every article that Falun Gong prints is false. In fact, Falun Gong (Epoch News) must also print many good, true, reasonable articles that the public will agree with, in order for its false and mostly-false articles to be believed. One mistake that Falun Gong made was to once brag about their strong media presence through the Epoch News, and then later decide to be quiet about that connection so it could seem to be quoted as independent. It's the same way that Epoch News personnel have set up a presentation at the UN, and NGO meetings and sites and then called them "independent." That's similar to the way that you see Adrian Zenz quote articles that were reports that came from Adrian Zenz. He has been caught writing mistranslations to produce fake additions to Chinese reports about Uyghurs and Chinese policy, and then, when those fake reports get picked up by other news media, he will quote those sources to bolster his "conclusions" based on his own fake reports. People who read Chinese, or even users of Google translate, can see what he has often done. But by mixing it up with bits of truth, and tickling the ears of his listeners, he gets away with it. BTW, your Agenda 21/2030 video is a well orchestrated interview that might have a lot of things right, and is based on telling us to fear things that we really should fear. But it also pretends that the original UN documents say things that just simply aren't there in those original documents. And those documents are in English!! Almost anyone can detect the fear-mongering agenda.