JW Insider

13 hours ago, The Librarian said:

Charles T. Russell From "Poems of Dawn" 1912

Nice poem, but it was not by C.T.Russell.

It had already been published in the Christian Science Sentinel in 1899.

It had already been published in a Theosophy journal in 1904.

The Oregon Law School Journal in 1902.

The Current Literature magazine of October 1890 published it with the added information that it had come from "The Fireside Magazine."

I assume it was published anonymously in the Fireside, because it shows up in several other places from the 1890's even up through very recently.

4 hours ago, Arauna said:

I guess we must remove the word conspiracy from the dictionary.

I don't know why anyone would think of that. There are proven conspiracies going on all the time. As you say, they are usually only proven later to have been conspiracies. But just because something fits a preconceived notion, agenda, ideology, or prejudice of ours, it doesn't mean there is actually a specific predefined conspiracy going on. The actual conspiracy might even be the one that we are inadvertently ignoring just because we prefer to believe the conspiracy that fits our preconceptions. This is why, a real look into available evidence from many different sources can be a protection against false conspiracies.

3 hours ago, Arauna said:

They are there because they are Muslim.

I'm not sure whether you realize that the Muslim issue in China is one of the most hypocritically pushed stories the West has recently attempted. The Western nations attack Muslims and push anti-Muslim rhetoric in their militaries constantly, and ultimately end up killing literally hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians in several different countries. You would think this was designed to create Muslim terrorists in the same way that Americans would undoubtedly react if America was continuously bombed decade after decade if, say, Japan, for example, kept bombing the US to take oil and other resources. 

I suspect there is a lot of prejudice and injustice that goes on in China against Muslims, especially when I consider how Americans have treated their minority populations recently, in my own town, and over the last couple centuries, too. But a lot of people don't realize that China has had a much larger terrorism issue with Muslims than the US has ever had on their own soil. Thousands of Uyghur Muslims have gone from China to Syria to fight with Al-Qaeda type forces. Many thousands are "radicalized." And yet even other Uyghur Muslims in China have praised the processes that China has been using to try to rehabilitate violent Muslim prisoners in humane ways. I know that the West would prefer to have everyone believe that there are ten million Uyghur Muslims all being tortured and chopped up for their body parts by the Chinese. If this was true, the terrorism problem would have gotten bigger. But it's actually considered by Uyghurs themselves as a massive success story. In fact, Chinese people have been punished for mistreatment of Uyghur Muslims and other minorities. The police in charge of the reeducation are Uyghur themselves. Pakistan officials for example have praised the Chinese processes and the great success story of the "reeducation" as a way to reduce terrorism. The Chinese leaders are proud of their successes in reducing ethnic violence, retraining for civic responsibility, education and gainful employment.

The Chinese are appalled at the United States, for the methods used here where violence and imprisonment are the common tools. The United States imprisons millions MORE people than does China, even though China has nearly 5 times the population. Incarceration rates are low in China, and the government emphasizes the assimilation of many different ethnicities of persons without violence. But the US has "black sites" "Guantanamo" "Abu Ghraib" and videos sometimes slip out showing torture.

I don't mention this at all to try to say that many things are better in China. A few things are probably better and a few things are probably worse. 80 percent of Chinese people give their government high marks in surveys. But they also strongly criticize things they don't like about their government. I've seen it. They laugh (sadly, sometimes) when they hear about the propaganda that tells Americans that the Chinese can't criticize their government. The laugh when they hear reports that China is kicking out Americans and teachers when they know that more and more people are coming to China to work. My son, who now writes Chinese fairly well, and went to school with many fellow students from China knows several Americans who have gone there to teach, or both Chinese and Americans who have gone back there to work. They also laugh when they hear that journalists can't get the truth out of the country. There are thousands of foreign journalists in China. It's the ones who are NOT in China, or have a Western political agenda who report the kind of very common false information.

So, I'm just hoping that we are careful not to fall into the trap of accepting exaggerated issues which are often just pushed onto us as propaganda.

We can often identify the hints that help us divide truth from propaganda when we hear items that can be checked for accuracy. We can't check all things for accuracy, because every nation tries to "spin" away its problems, and hide the negatives. 

4 hours ago, Arauna said:

The noose in the entire world is getting tighter. We are heading for a neo-fascistic/communistic world system wherein oligarchs and capitalist billionaires are working towards the same goals.

Just in case you think I disagree, I don't. I think this is absolutely true. This doesn't mean I see all the same conspiracies that you see, and perhaps not in all the same places. But that's not because I think you are necessarily wrong. It only means that when I tried to find the same evidence you seem to have based your specific beliefs on, I didn't see the evidence.

(I should add that this is not because I haven't tried. I've asked several persons to show the supposed Agenda points you often speak about in the actual U.N. documents you have claimed to know about, for example, and no one has yet been able to show me the actual places in these agreements where many of the claims are supposedly stated. This is not just about you, but several other persons I have questioned elsewhere who believe the same things.)

Now I find that some of these ideas come from sources like the ones linked to earlier. When I see these persons twisting facts in exactly the same way that some apostates twist facts about Witnesses, I begin to think its important to start checking out ALL of their "facts."

4 hours ago, Arauna said:

Tech companies gave away their technological secrets willingly to China and were instrumental in building up China in exchange for mega global financial growth....In the modern secular way of US thinking - I guess they are not accountable because the US dollar is the god ! It is the standard way of thinking in US. Trickle down economics has fooled everyone!  

More points of perfect agreement between us! LOL.

4 hours ago, Arauna said:

The mega- capitalist corporations did not bring 'tax' into USA to help with infrastructure.  No, they did not want to pay tax because then they have no control over where the tax dollars are spent.   Instead they create "charity foundations" wherein they themselves  decide which subversive or front organizations get their money (those, which promote only their propaganda) and they  still "look good " in the public eye.

Absolutely. This is a difficult point for most Americans to understand. Even what looks like some of the best philanthropy will sometimes go (at least partially) to excellent charitable ends. But this too is often done as a way to divert millions to their own friends and family in organizations that do good, but with self-serving ends. One of those goals can be to "look good" while pushing an agenda that overall does even less good for the greater number of people. In other words, a specific policy that might help people will be lobbied against by a company that seems to do good for at least a few people. And then, the worst of all worlds, as you mention above, are those front organizations that pretend to do good but are really subversive. The US government has made use of such organizations even though they have great names like US AID, Centers for Democracy, Council on Foreign Relations, etc.

4 hours ago, Arauna said:

CCP are not only manipulating these numbers but economic data etc. An oppressive, centralized government and its capabilities of hiding facts are unlimited.   i.e.Citizens in China who were reporting on the new virus using VPNs, were clamped down upon and all are facing long prison sentences.... no freedom any longer in China. 

I wouldn't doubt that numbers are being manipulated. I still have the TV on in the next room and half listened to Trump's State of the Union. Governments manipulate numbers as long as they can get away with it. I listened to the President manipulate economic data and hide facts, so what China does wouldn't surprise me either.

But it's completely untrue that that citizens in China reporting about the virus on VPN's are facing long prison sentences. They are still talking about it right now, on VPN's, as we speak. You can go right now on WeChat, Tik Tok, or Twitter and see Chinese people talking about the virus. Some are scared. Some are optimistic. Some have complained about local officials mishandling it. China is probably happy in general to have Chinese people talking about it. But there have been some who have been pushing a political agenda and who think that trying to cause mass hysteria is the way to go, or a way to get attention. If persons are purposely trying to cause panic and terror just because they don't like a political party then they should be censured. When China started the new 1000 bed hospital, I saw many Western reports (from amateurs) that those bulldozers were there to bury thousands of bodies. This is irresponsible, and such disinformation is second-nature on US news panels.

6 hours ago, Kosonen said:

I have seen that there are always those who do everything to discredit whistleblowers, no matter the subject.

If a conspiracy promoter doesn't want to be discredited they should be more careful with facts and evidence. There is a lot of truth in many of the things that any good conspiracy promoter uses. But all too often they start to promote an ideology or an agenda that requires them to begin avoiding and hiding facts that don't fit. If they are not completely honest, then they should be discredited, not for the whistleblowing or truthful parts of their message, but only for the untruthful parts.

2 hours ago, Arauna said:

I am not going to argue with you over conspiracy theories and what is true and what is not.

I'm sure I could find a thousand places for that, if I thought arguing over conspiracy theories was important.

2 hours ago, Arauna said:

However,  one is naive if you think that powerful corporations did not willingly move their factories to China to benefit from the cheap 18-hour slave labour shifts where so-called inspections were never done to ensure fair working hours.

The idea of cheap labor is a constant search for companies everywhere. I worked for an international financial company that was constantly looking for cheaper labor for call centers, programmers, print and mail centers, even data centers (in spite of the dangers of having financial data transmitted over open lines often unencrypted). Several countries had bad reputations from 'fair labor' perspectives. China is a large country that is still basically poor even though the majority of persons are already above what the USA would consider a poverty level. Their track record on labor practices is no better than most other poor countries in spite of better laws than most countries on workers' rights and labor practices.

9 hours ago, Arauna said:

Factory suicides were prevalent.  Avarice and greed allowed them to finance factories there, allowed them to share important intellectual property patents which helped China in their race to build satellites, rockets, and military equipment.

The evidence on "factory suicides" in particular is probably not a number I'd expect to get very accurately, but overall reported suicides in China (9.7/100k) are relatively low, with much higher suicide rates in Russia (31/100k), with USA  suicide rates (15.3) somewhere between those two countries, worse than China, but better than Russia. China's rate is about as low as Georgia, and the US is about as high as Sweden. http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-country/

China traded on the greed of of countries/companies willing to do this, only allowing them to base factories in China if those countries/companies were willing to share important intellectual property patents. Of course, this is how the US got many important patents, too, by sharing with other countries, or syphoning off inventors from other countries. I was surprised to learn that many of the patents that US companies have fought over were actually already on the books years earlier in other countries and it is only the US version of the patent that is being fought over. This even goes back to the 19th century telegraph (later AT&T) where S.F.B.Morse was only getting a patent for a version of a design already in use in the UK.

9 hours ago, Arauna said:

It may not be conspiracy but i do think their greed made them act in a treasonous fashion. The US government was asleep and allowed monopolies to proliferate and also never held these companies to account.

I agree. If you read Exxon Mobil's annual financial reports, sometimes you'd think you are reading the charter of one of the most powerful nations in the world, not merely an international company.

9 hours ago, Arauna said:

These treasonous corporations still pay very little taxes on their profits in USA but have their head offices in other tax havens.......  Too many of the high-up politicians also  have stakes in Chinese corporations.......

That's true, although these corporations usually have lawyers to lobby Congress to put laws on the books so that none dare call it treason.

9 hours ago, Arauna said:

While I do not care what they have done  (I do not take sides) - it does tell me that the top echelons of society and corporations have no morals and are lawless.

Absolutely true, and it keeps getting worse because they have reached a degree of power so that they keep pushing the envelope on what they can get away with with no one to stop them. 

9 hours ago, Arauna said:

Politicians have conflict of  interest and do not declare it ....... because very little investigative research journalism is done these days.  The six major media companies in the west are . . . Have started  using bots to prepare the news....... 

Investigative reporting is expensive and cuts into profits, and all too often will embarrass the corporate advertising sources of the media outlet, which is itself a monopoly with conflicts of interests after merging with and buying up competing media outlets. Entertainment made from "fluffy" or insignificant (or fake) news is what the audiences have already been trained to expect - and want. Most people probably don't realize that their news is carefully culled for them so that they don't learn anything real about what their own country is doing. And even a serious and important issue can be manipulated to create fear, propaganda, or a distraction from something else that should be more important.

Apologies in advance, but here's my opinion about persons like Antony Sutton.

For years he has written conspiracy theories that work because they contain small bits of truth and truthful evidence. But he takes this evidence to come to a conclusion that is absolutely the opposite of the truth. It's like finding 20 macaws in Brazil and then writing books that say ALL birds in Brazil are macaws. One has to ignore a few million pieces of evidence to make such an untruthful statement, and hope that no one else writes a book on the variety of Brazilian birds.

I listened to Sutton's interview above, and was not surprised at all. For those who don't watch, here is another version of his beliefs written out. I'll comment on the statements made here:

http://www.wisedup.org/antony-sutton-champion-truth/#

Note: More details are found here: https://www.michaeljournal.org/articles/banks/item/the-complicity-of-wall-street

According to Sutton, American International Corporation, (A.I.C), with one of Federal Reserve Banks founders, Frank Vanderlip, as president, played an important roll in the Bolshevik takeover of Russia. The official purpose of A.I.C was to develop domestic and foreign enterprises, extend American activities abroad and promote interests of American and foreign bankers, business and engineering. A less known purpose was to aid the communists. (2) W. Lawrence Saunders, one of the directors of A.I.C, even wrote a letter to President Wilson, saying that he was ”in sympathy with the Soviet form of government.” (3)

There were Americans in sympathy with the Soviet form of government, and even more British who would admit their sympathies. But these were very much the exceptions. Some American businessmen just saw it as a new chance to break into Russian profiteering, as many American businessmen have done after any revolution until the revolution proves successful enough on its own to dismiss them. The phrase above "A less known purpose was to aid the communists" is very misleading. A full communist revolution still needs to buy and trade with nations all around, just as Marx had always claimed. (When a lot of people see a successful Marxist revolution as they believe they now see in China, they wish to credit the economic gains as some kind of compromise with "capitalism" not recognizing such interactions as a legitimate part of Marxism's "material reality.") Still the American investment only works to the extent that communism takes many years before it can gain financial independence from these "investors." Giving so much aid that communism is helped on its feet too fast is counterproductive to American business interests. Buying a "trading foothold" might have been considered more similar to what happens today when Apple negotiates for a foothold in China to sell iPhones. It is not done to aid communists.

You can find even more American businessmen begging the US President (and/or Congress) to allow them to continue trading with Hitler's Germany right up to the time of America's involvement in WWII. (And some others found ways to continue working with the Nazis even into the time of the war.)

More from the Sutton site:

William Franklin Sands, executive secretary of A.I.C, contributed $1 million to the Bolsheviks. (4) William Boyce Thompson, the first full-term director of FED and a large stockholder in Rockefeller-controlled Chase Bank, as well as a financial associate of J.P Morgan, did the same (5) In a nine point memorandum to England’s Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Thompson, also urged to support the Bolshevik revolutionaries and it´s armies. (6) One of the leading Wall Street Firms, Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett also supported the Bolsheviks. (7) The purpose of all this, according to Sutton, was to eliminate capitalist competition from Russia and to play out the Hegelian Dialectic tactic. (8) More on this later.

The czars were already trading with France, for example, so that France was already controlling a lot of trade in Russia, and popular hatred of this fact was a major factor in the 1917 revolution. The point following the (4) is wrong in that it implies Thompson as part of Chase-Morgan made the same investment made by AIC. AIC wanted to build railroads and invested $50 million between 1916 and 1917 in various countries around the world, so that only-fiftieth of that went to Russia/USSR. They were actually big investors in several revolutionary countries. Still, finding a few exceptions to the rule didn't change the overall feelings of business persons in the US toward communism and socialism. The largest of these companies were already making use of the FEAR that the US had for such ideologies. The US Government could be put to use to put down any forms of socialism and communism that might affect the profitability of US companies. Rockefeller could get troops to shoot their own workers if they would strike for higher wages or worker's rights. (That's what socialism meant to US companies: worker's rights.) I've read through literally thousands of FBI files from 1917 through 1919, and the US government shows its fear of any socialist tendencies and how these tendencies might begin affecting US commerce. (They were also after war profiteers in the US who manipulated coal prices for example.)

Item just after the (7) above shows how Sutton takes this small amount of evidence and turns it from partial truth to untruth. There was never an issue of capitalist competition from Russia, and supporting communism would be no solution to that if there was. But he gives away his complete lack of objectivity with the term "the Hegelian Diaiectic." There is no such thing as "the Hegelian Dialectic." There were many Hegelian dialectic theories. Conspiracy theorists, especially those with strong anti-Semitic bias, latch on to one particular form that they have built up themselves as a "dog-whistle." (This is similar to how anti-Marxist or Trotsky-ish or uninformed conspiracists trot out the otherwise worthless "Frankfurt school" of Marxism as if it is a real branch of Marxist theory.)

If a person has gotten this far, then Sutton can now dump anything on them no matter how misleading, for example:

According to former US-ambassador William Dodd, Crane ”did much to bring on the Kerensky revolution which gave way to Communism.”

He hopes, obviously, that the reader doesn't understand the important differences between the Kerensky revolution and the Communist revolution. He implies that they are related, when in fact, Kerensky was basically just a czarist who wanted the same czarist form of government without the czars. Not much different than the UK government if the Queen didn't speak up.

But the most untruthful of all claims is that the US sent troops to help the 1917 revolution, especially by guarding the railroad until the Bolsheviks could handle it themselves. This is just plain false. The US sent its boys to Russia to fight on the side of the White Russian army, not the Red. Americans died fighting the Bolsheviks. Americans mostly came in from the East side while others came in from the West side.

44 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

If someone stops buying your stuff ... sell to somebody else.

This should not reduce production ... it only increases the marketing costs to new customers

That wouldn't help the trade deficit with China if they stopped buying American stuff, and Americans still bought their stuff. It would merely increase that deficit.

Of course, if Americans were to also stop buying their stuff, that would help the deficit. But then, where would Walmart be? Where would millions of Walmart employees be? To be price-competitive with Walmart, Amazon also relies heavily on China for product.to sell. Apple, too. So, prices go up due to not being able to rely on low cost labor from China, and some products will go up in price due the high "barriers of entry" to start up manufacturing in other places, or begin relying on them.

You might be looking at the angle of America continuing to produce as much as it does and sell to new markets. If there is currently a $100b/year potential selling American products to Chinese markets, where is the replacement market for $100b/yr product going to come from, no matter how much more is spent on marketing? Britain has fought wars with China to force them to buy drugs (esp, opium) from British sources. The US has fought wars, but mostly just fighting through financial leverage, to force countries to advertise and sell American cigarette brands. In the age of the Internet this is nearly impossible to pull off so easily, so that it costs even more (militarily) to force a regime change or otherwise force a country to buy American products.

He was fairly young, too. Only 44. And it probably shows the weakness of airline screening, since he had come in from Wuhan:

The Philippine Department of Health said a 44-year-old Chinese man from Wuhan was admitted on Jan. 25 after experiencing a fever, cough, and sore throat. He developed severe pneumonia, and in his last few days, “the patient was stable and showed signs of improvement, however, the condition of the patient deteriorated within his last 24 hours resulting in his demise.”

The man’s 38-year-old female companion, also from Wuhan, also tested positive for the virus and remains in hospital isolation in Manila.

40 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

What does Trump wish the tariffs accomplish?

That's pretty simple using Trump's own words:

"We can't continue to allow China to rape our country, and that's what we're doing,"

"the greatest theft in the history of the world [is carried out by China]"

He was speaking about China's unfair competitive advantage over the USA through subsidies, currency manipulation, and their low-cost labor. China was put on a watch-list to watch for currency manipulation but there was no evidence they had done this.

So Trump went after the trade deficit, which had been $365 billion as reported for 2015 when Trump was running. It's now reported at $419 billion for 2018. (US exports 120 billion a year to China and we import 540 billion.) 

Trump said that the tariffs could greatly reduce this deficit. America would win big by NOT trading with them any more.

So this isn't about the idea that Trump had anything to do with the coronavirus. It's just that it would have the effect of reducing China's ability to produce, slow down their economy, and stop a lot of people from trading with China. There are persons in governments who are so stupid that they would think of such a vicious solution without concern for the possible consequences for the rest of the world, or the reputation the US would suffer. After all, look at America's use of weapons of mass destruction, napalm, agent orange, chemical and biological weapons development. Look at what America did to North Korea. Or even so-called "conventional" weapons like MOAB that apparently killed more civilians in Afghanistan than soldiers.

But I'm only talking about where and why such conspiracies will so easily get spread.

5 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Just for kicks, google ‘corona virus biological weapon’ and see what comes up

Something like that happens with just about everything that comes out of China. Of course, it was odd that it was so closely timed to Chinese New Year. As it is, it will easily slow down China's economy by 1 or 2 percent. If it had gone just another week or so without being caught, and the New Year's travel had begun, it would have accomplished exactly what Trump would have wished the tariffs could accomplish.

6 minutes ago, Anna said:

I have heard it is supposed to take over a year to develop a vaccine. If that's the case then Armageddon might have to come earlier!

Solved. But John Butler, . . . oh well.

10 hours ago, Anna said:

I wonder if there is something the scientists aren't telling us that's so scary about this particular corona virus,

Too early to tell, of course. Seems, the effects are somewhere between a flu and a pneumonia. But the percentage of those who are infected to those who die (so far) is something like 2 percent, where not all early cases resulted in timely hospitalization. (Mostly because of how it effects the elderly.) Now that nearly all cases result in hospitalization, that percentage is slightly dropping (so far). The problem will show up again when it presents in even more remote, poor areas with very few hospitals and facilities. China is still a poor country, but can manage its resources well to react to such a problem. 

The effects of the flu in America kill about 6 percent of those hospitalized. 8k/140k. The United States has remote, poor areas too, but this country is also able to manage resources to react, although probably not as well as China. (But of all those infected with the flu in the United States the death rate is hardly even a tenth of one percent, because for most persons the flu isn't potent enough to require hospitalization.)

So it's a much more serious virus, and had it started in rural, southern America it would likely have spread much more rapidly. If it had been discovered only a few weeks later in China, it would have spread much more rapidly too. By far, the world's greatest "migrations" happen during holiday seasons in China, where a very high percentage of Chinese take to their high-speed trains and criss-cross China to visit family and friends in other provinces.

It acts like a very contagious flu, and could easily break into countries where the 2 percent death rate is expected. If it takes 3 months to create a vaccine or a survival treatment, this means that in three months with a nearly "linear" rate of increase (3k more each day) there would be on the order of 100,000 in three months, where 2 percent is 2,000 deaths. If exponential, deriving from current rates, then a million people could have it in 3 months where 2 percent is 20,000 deaths.

But China shared the full genetic sequence of the virus back on January 10, so if everyone rushes this would typically mean that vaccines would be developed in a matter of 1 to 2 months.

And as you say, then the big thing is how to stay ahead of morphing (evolving) versions.

A

On 1/31/2020 at 10:53 AM, Srecko Sostar said:

Please, i am curios to know What makes you to be authentic? ... in comparison with 

Perhaps his real, full name is: Mr. Authentic J. Winsider. No relation.

So far, the Johns Hopkins site seems to have the best information about the spread of the coronavirus. Looks like it will hit 10,000 today with 213+ dead. If you move the map to the United States you can click on each individual case (5 so far).

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Not to minimize the potency of the coronavirus. But it looks like CNN finally decided it was time to make the point some have been making here for several days. It's not the coronavirus. It's the flu (this 2019-2020 season, so far). The article is here:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/health/flu-deadly-virus-15-million-infected-trnd/index.html

10 minutes ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Meanwhile, 1.2 million people a year are being killed by mosquitoes, . . . .... and there is no panic anywhere!

There would be if these mosquitoes could be traced to China or Russia. Prejudice and racism drive a lot of the hype. Not that this isn't a particularly potent virus, but when 80,000 died from the 2017-18 flu season in the U.S., the Western world was not mapping and charting and reporting in the papers.

7 hours ago, admin said:

most recover.... but the numbers are still bad.

I thought the chart posted here (below) was interesting. The CDC says that for the United States, 6,600 people died during the 2019-2020 flu season, since about November, basically. 80,000 people died during the 2017-2018 flu season. Flu deaths in the US usually range from 10,000 to 60,000 every year. In the UK it's basically 0 to 10,000. In China it's 0 to 50,000, which is relatively small considering their population is about 4 times the size of the United States.
.

In the video from the linked post, Paula White says:

"...we declare that any strange winds, any strange winds that have been sent to hurt the church, sent against this nation, sent against our president, sent against myself, sent against others, we break it by the superior blood of Jesus."

I hope this clears up any misunderstandings.

16 hours ago, indagator said:

While the organization has often cited passages like 1 Thess. 4:16 (“with an archangel’s voice”), I cannot recall the Society ever using the Galatians passage on this matter of Jesus having been the foremost angel.

I never thought of it that way. I always took it to mean, 'you treated me like an angel or even like Jesus Christ.' I don't doubt the possibility of reading it as if an equivalence between angel and Christ however. (Even if not an equivalence between Paul and angel and Christ, of course.)

It's a little like Zech 12:8 in the LXX.

And, btw, great to see you here again.

CONSPIRACIES

There is some truth to many conspiracies. Also some conspiracies have been proven to be completely true. A few conspiracies are completely false, sometimes made up specifically to dismiss the truth of a real conspiracy.

In the Babylon thread mentioned above, there is a very long video which seems primarily derived from the scripts that Alex Jones of InfoWars promoted. In fact, much of the video is the voice of Alex Jones. Under that topic, the subject of conspiracies had already come up with reference to beliefs about the UN, and Alex Jones fits right in on this topic.

I never paid attention to Alex Jones of InfoWars, but I figured from things I heard that he would also have included a lot of truth in his conspiracy theories. The only time I had listened for any length of time to Alex Jones was when I listened to a documentary about him, which I thought was a really good expose of his dishonesty on many issues, It used his own words and contradictions, lies and backtracking, and interviews with persons who knew him personally at various stages of his life.

FAKE CRISIS ACTORS

That documentary just mentioned was followed up with another documentary on Alex Jones and the gun issue, through which he deeply hurt parents of children who lost their lives in school shootings. With reference to some of the worst of these shootings, Alex Jones has claimed that they are staged, and that these are "crisis actors" acting as dead children, frantic teachers, grieving parents, police, etc. One parent (who lost a child at Sandy Hook, CT) had the resolve to challenge what Jones was doing, so Jones verbally attacked him viciously and even instigated members of his audience to continue harassing him, so that the man was not able to move from one part of the country to another without his new address being published. He had to move about 7 times. He finally won a suit against Alex Jones, who had to apologize, but then Jones went right back to attacking him after the apology.

There was another school shooting more recently where I saw that people were quickly talking about how the timeline was faked, the crisis actors were faking, interviews with children gave conflicting reports about where it was, how many shots, when the police showed up, etc. This one I decided to follow more closely and watched all the available videos that the conspiracy promoters were using as evidence. If these people were serious, it meant that people can see things in videos that aren't really there and not see things that were there. They could completely misread news reporting and timelines as if illiterate, yet manage the most amazing mental gymnastics in extrapolating about a minor mistake or typo. Many seemed to be outright lying, and proud that they were spreading this "truth" in the service of showing that people like Alex Jones had been right all along. The term "cult" came to mind.

REAL CRISIS ACTORS

This little bit of research made me wonder about another set of controversial videos I heard about. These were the videos being staged by the "White Helmets" who really turn out to be a group of Islamo-Fascist, Al-Qaeda styled terrorists in Syria, who have staged videos with actual dead bodies, and who were caught faking many videos with live persons (even children) pretending to be dead, to help promote support for their side against Assad's forces. Finally they even staged supposed "chemical" attacks that had the necessary effect to bring support to Al-Qaeda and against Assad. The United States even got away with supporting Al-Qaeda in this war, something that would not have been tolerated by Americans in general just a couple years earlier. Of course, America had to rename them "moderate rebels." In a couple of cases, not only were the child "actors" recycled from video to video, but other videos showed up with these same "White Helmet" heroes chopping heads off prisoners. The difficulties in researching these videos was due to the fact that the videos that showed the "White Helmet" mistakes and fakery were quickly disappearing as fast as they were being exposed, and only the better made fakes were being publicized. Some were sloppy enough that you could see, inconsistent use of gas masks, and in others, "dead" people being given directions for the video.

Western sources rarely admitted that more than one or two of the White Helmets videos were faked. [CNN: Syria's White Helmets apologize for Mannequin Challenge video] (https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/24/middleeast/mannequin-challenge-white-helmets-syria/index.html)  But those who followed the videos closely found serious and obvious problems with several.

Ultimately, although very little publicized, the United States began to drop the claim that they had physical evidence of Assad's chemical/gas attacks. The primary source of the OPCW report against Assad had turned out to be a private blog (bellingcat) which had been treated as if it were an intelligence resource. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had initially dismissed dissenting members of OPCW teams that disagreed with their official results. However a series of email leaks and leaked versions of reports showed that OPCW had faked results.  OPCW was massively exposed, even in front of the UN.

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/24/opcw-investigator-testified-at-un-that-no-chemical-attack-took-place-in-douma-syria/

36 minutes ago, 4Jah2me said:

 Yes what you have written there about Russell, in my opinion, would show that he was not inspired of God, nor did he have God's guidance. I believe I've read on here that he wrote unkind things about 'people of colour' too. 

It was much less common with Russell to get political. And his statements about people of color were mostly better than his contemporaries. Somewhat progressive for his time. But Rutherford had been a political person before becoming a Bible Student. He even worked on a U.S. presidential campaign.

1 hour ago, 4Jah2me said:

 Maybe you could start off by saying why JWs actually need to look into world politics and worldly affairs ? 

I didn't want to give the impression that there is a need, only that we probably have a general expectation that politics can show just how bad things are in the world and therefore we all have some interest. Some of the details can be used when trying to get other persons interested in the message about the Kingdom. It is rather rare, I think, for most Witnesses to take much of a specific interest in a political issue, except where something might effect us personally -- in countries where a ban on Witnesses might be in the works, or formal recognition, for that matter.

The level of interest of Kosonen or Arauna or myself is not typical at all in my experience. I can discuss politics with no one except my own family and even here there are obvious practical limits.

But you might not believe the level of politics in the 1910s through the 1940's among Bible Students and early Jehovah's Witnesses. It was driven by hundreds of articles that delved into political matters at great length and great depth. Russell wrote a letter to the U.S. President to tell him that Filipinos are lazy and the Japanese are hardworking. The articles on Hitler even before he took power were already taking up pages of the Golden Age. There are densely packed articles on Germany and Hitler that went on for several pages with a level of detail and quotations from secular sources that would be unheard of today.

@Melinda I am not referring to politics in its most practical sense, about getting things done in a state, or city, or community. I am referring more to the divisive ideologies of national politics that keep people arguing about foreign policy, drive prejudices, create conflicts between nations, produce nationalism, etc.

Sometimes when people discuss religion or politics with someone, we are apt to wonder just how anyone can believe things that seem so crazy to us, while at the same time, the other person is wondering the same thing about our own beliefs.

So I start this new thread on politics under a JW Club, because we are supposed to have a kind of love-hate relationship with the topic of politics. We stay neutral, but that's often just enough distance to get things wrong. And we stay alert for issues that might end up being of Biblical significance, so that most of us stay informed at least through mainstream news sources.

However, there are other views far from the mainstream, that some Witnesses hold to. Most political issues have become very complex due to the fast-paced movement of world events since the dawn of a military industrial age and a lightning fast information age on top of that.

The mainstream media sources in most nations have an agenda in support of the ruling classes and/or elite classes within the nation. Several add a layer of "information" on top of that with a partisan political agenda -- very easy to spot in nations with only two major political parties. An agenda within an agenda. Outside of mainstream media, however, the sources are chaotic and sometimes extreme, full of outlandish interpretations and conspiracies, too. The chaos is even stoked by entities hoping to push audiences back to mainstream sources, where we feel a certain rational consistency of messaging. Of course, that "messaging" is often just propaganda inoculating us from studying situations for ourselves. This keeps us from realizing that mainstream media is also full of chaos and conspiracies, but constant repetition of messages makes it seem correct. If it doesn't quite seem correct, we feel that things are just too complicated to ever get the whole truth anyway. So we give up and pretend the mainstream media is the best we can do, or we hang onto some conspiracy that seems to explain everything.

In this topic I plan to give a few of my own views about various political topics. It's easiest to structure these views around comments that have already been made from others. Especially comments where I take nearly the opposite view. This should help to highlight the wide range of possible interpretations. There are plenty of such comments in the recent/current "Babylon the Great" topic, so I will probably get a few ideas from there over the next few weeks. This isn't to pick on anyone's views in particular, but I find myself disagreeing with @Arauna and @Kosonen on a range of topics. I also completely agree with them on a range of topics. But this might show how people can take several or more different paths of interpretation from some of the same "evidence" or information.

It might be a while, because I haven't figured out where to start yet. So anyone should feel free to make suggestions or jump in before I do.

24 minutes ago, Arauna said:

I saw footage of trees (large circumference - old trees)  on hundreds of trucks standing in line ready to leave for the port to China.  Kenia's forests are being dessimated and animal habitat ruined - no cry from Green Earth or one of those organizations. 

Sad, and very sad about the lions, too.

25 minutes ago, Arauna said:

They do not have christian-judeo conscience.  Speak to people who have lived there for a number of years  - they have no compassion to the western degree.  

You might be happy to know that I will stop discussing politics (China, communism, etc.) for a while. But I'd love to continue discussing some of these ideas at a later time. I should probably move all the political comments into a more appropriate topic area, at least I should move the posts that had so little to do directly with this topic of Babylon the Great. But I won't do that for a while, and I hope you will feel free to continue adding your thoughts.

49 minutes ago, Arauna said:

I do not read propaganda on how wonderful China or communism is

I don't either. I try to get information from original sources when possible, leaks, info from FOIA requests, even those we are not supposed to see, anti-Chinese criticisms that come from pro-Chinese sources, and pro-Chinese admissions that come from generally anti-Chinese sources. The best "gems" come from researching items that come from sources which apparently slip up and accidentally admit the opposite of their usual agenda. (Such as the Bolton interview I heard.)

Here's an innocuous example: Let's say that a person who generally writes anti-Chinese propaganda says something like, "well it's true that China has a 5 percent GDP growth rate this year, but this already represents a slowdown and presents a better picture than it can probably maintain, because [trade tarriffs, high debt, etc. etc.] . . . " 

In the above, we can be pretty sure that the 5 percent growth rate has a high chance of being correct, or even understated, because it was admitted to be true, even when the person probably didn't want to admit it. Further research would show that the actual rate had been 6 percent, and that it really was a "slowdown" -- but a slowdown that is still twice as fast as the US growth rate. International financial newspapers and magazines which I used to get at work all the time were always full of "surprises" like this to help you build up a picture from such items. A reader has to be skeptical at all times, of everone on every side of an issue, and do this a lot, to get a better overall picture. 

46 minutes ago, Arauna said:

John Bolton does not have the facts about the tactics.

John Bolton did not admit all those common American tactics out loud, nor would he ever purposely say that China has not used these tactics -- even if they haven't. Bolton proved himself a liar on several occasions in the past, and I tend to tune him out when NPR, CNN or FOX is playing somewhere in the background. All Bolton explicitly said was that he was concerned that China's tactics are taking away former African friends and allies and diverting resources that America was once able to exploit more easily, because China uses different tactics that are attractive by comparison. You may or may not know some of the tactics America uses and/or former colonial powers in Africa have used for exploitation, but there is a concerted effort to try to pin those same exploitative tactics on China. I'm sure Bolton would gladly say that America has never used these tactics and only China uses these tactics if he thought he could get away with it. All he really said was that whatever tactics China is using, it is gaining them preference over America: that we are losing friends and they are gaining friends.

This has been a big problem with American anti-Chinese rhetoric for years now. China has like an 80+ percent  approval rating for its policies in Pakistan working together on ports, rairlrods, energy, trade. Nothing is altruistic of course, since China is helped by these same projects. But America is pushed out of the picture in Pakistan, since America is more militaristic and always wants to squeeze out resources and build military bases and have control over a country's finances, and makes countries pay for American corporations who take out much more profit for themselves. China wants the same resources in Africa that America does, but America has sometimes used its own military, or paid for death squads to keep cheap labor working when they complain about abuse, especially in mines.

So, when I hear things like all the military bases that China has built in Africa, I immediately check to see if they even have even one, and then I check to see how many the United States has. When I hear that China is using the old predatory loan scheme that America is famous for, I check to see if there is evidence they have even done this once. I've started to recognize that almost everything China is blamed for, might even be true to some extent, but it is nearly always a projection of what has been done in a much worse way by others.