JW Insider

After seeing so many FG reenactments on NYC sidewalks, I can't help it when I look at pictures like this one, to wonder if this is really two policemen taking down an FG member in Tianmanmen Square in 2000. Or is it completely staged by FG members, with a couple of them grinning in the background (and one woman on the right going off to buy groceries?).
https://www.businessinsider.com/dragon-springs-falun-gong-upstate-new-york-compound-photos-2019-9#according-to-the-dragon-springs-website-many-of-those-living-in-the-compound-escaped-from-china-4

I'm sure there were arrests, and I'm sure that there was violence. Policing tends to invite persons who try to get away with brutality and torture, and that can't just be in the United States. Perhaps these are "secret police" above. But I can't help but notice that none of the pictures of those who look more police-like depict the level of violence shown above:
 

A more recent investigation published this year in Australia is reported here:
https://www.abc.net.au/foreign/the-power-of-falun-gong/12492696
Plenty of politics, but nothing about organ harvesting. Here's a portion:
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The movement first gained global attention when its members became the target of ruthless persecution by the Chinese Communist Party, triggering widespread sympathy and support in the West.
The Falun Gong’s creed is Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, but former practitioners now speaking out are accusing it of practising dangerous and divisive teachings.
This joint ABC Foreign Correspondent-Background Briefing investigation shines a spotlight on this global movement, revealing how Falun Gong has morphed from a fringe quasi-religious group into a powerful player in America’s conservative media landscape, working to ensure another term for Trump so he can continue his war of words with China.
Background Briefing’s podcast series also investigates the movement’s Australian operations, uncovering powerful political collaborators closer to home.
From Australia, to Taiwan, to Los Angeles and the movement’s “Dragon Springs” headquarters in upstate New York, Foreign Correspondent’s Eric Campbell and Background Briefing’s Hagar Cohen explore the opaque world of the Falun Gong and its mysterious leader Master Li Hongzhi.
This investigation reveals how the group has harnessed social media, spending millions through made-up groups and fake identities to promote Donald Trump and his anti-Beijing policies.
“This is a matter of cosmic importance to them that Trump gets re-elected”, says one member of nearly ten years, who has now left the Falun Gong.
Another former insider says the movement promotes intolerant teachings which are racist and homophobic.
“I’m mixed race. I am quite possibly just homosexual. And those are the two kinds of people that are purportedly causing the end of the world,” says ex-devotee Anna, now in her 20s and living on the US west coast. 
As a child, “Anna” was taken by her mother to Falun Gong’s US headquarters, ‘Dragon Springs’, a sprawling but secretive 160-hectare compound in New York State.
It was, she says, a world of strange beliefs and intolerance.
“The leader of Falun Gong claims that race-mixing in humans is part of an alien plot to drive humanity further from the gods.”
Background Briefing follows Sydney resident Shani May as she tries to find out the truth about her mother’s relationship with the Falun Gong.  
Following the death of her famous jazz singer father Ricky May, her mother Colleen sought solace with the group. Soon Colleen stopped taking her blood pressure tablets, putting her faith in Falun Gong to cure her. Three years ago, Colleen died, aged 75.
“If it wasn’t for Falun Gong, she’d still be with us”, declares Shani.
Former followers allege there’s a cult-like abhorrence of modern medicine that’s claimed lives.
“In Falun Gong the teachings are, you don’t acknowledge illnesses”, says one ex-devotee.
According to Shani May, whose mother Colleen became so deeply involved with her beliefs that she lost touch with family and friends, “They're manipulating and they do it slowly…And as time goes on, you get further and further down the rabbit hole and they don't let you come back out.”

@JW Insider  I found some more articles by former member of FG, Ben Hurley, and he confirms what you talked about a few posts back about the involvement of FG in several so called "independent" organizations. This is apparently only an 11 minute read 🙂
https://medium.com/@Ben_D_Hurley/the-agenda-that-drives-falun-gongs-media-organisations-62201ddeff66
The agenda that drives Falun Gong’s media organisations
Understanding the spiritual mission of Falun Gong can help us clearly identify which organisations they control.
Anyone who vaguely follows Falun Gong knows about organisations like The Epoch Times, New Tang Dynasty TV and Shen Yun. They’re not open about the extent they’re controlled by Falun Gong (completely 100%), but they don’t deny a connection.
But what about the other organisations that either hide or deny their connection to Falun Gong in order to reach a different audience? I’ve met progressives who would abhor Falun Gong’s conservative social teachings, but who love Chris Chappell’s China Uncensored.
TheBL.com has had some recent coverage for its close ties to The Epoch Times. But a quick glance at the outlet’s About Us section gives it away immediately as a Falun Gong media, as it contains the words Truth, Compassion and Forbearance (these are the three core stated principles of Falun Gong).
Similarly, the newspaper Vision China Times has carved out a niche for itself in Australia. No mention of its connection to Falun Gong in any of its material, despite this media outlet pushing Falun Gong’s agenda to a tee.
I don’t know the exact connection myself, and it’s beyond my ability right now to look into how it all works behind the scenes in terms of ownership structures and the hierarchy of power and control.
But these organisations promote Falun Gong’s agenda down to the most minute detail, and this is something I’m able to talk about due to my own experience working for Falun Gong media organisations, mostly The Epoch Times, when I was a Falun Gong believer. This article is about how to identify the message that Falun Gong wants to convey to the world’s people by various means, and how to identify the nuances of an organisation that is connected to Falun Gong.
Independent?!
One of the most common words I see Falun Gong media using to describe themselves is ‘independent’. This description doesn’t really hold under scrutiny.
Their coverage of Falun Gong is absolutely positive without exception, even though that organisation has some very negative traits including a slew of hushed up deaths due to teachings against taking medicine, and a cult-like compound in Cuddebackville, New York state.
Their coverage of the Chinese government is absolutely negative without exception, even though that organisation has some positive traits.
Their coverage of figures deemed supportive of Falun Gong (The Trump family, supportive Republicans) is absolutely positive, their coverage of figures deemed enemies (Hillary Clinton, Jacky Chan, Zhang Yimou, any CCP official who likes his or her job) is absolutely negative.
And their coverage of social phenomena like homosexuality, abortion, and pop music completely accords with Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi’s teachings.
I believe these media are less independent than those with a clear political bias or social agenda, because they aren’t transparent about their agenda.
Teachings about ordinary people
Key to identifying a Falun Gong organisation is knowing a little about the teachings. Most Falun Gong teachings are available on minghui.org, but there are a lot of secret ones that aren’t available, existing teachings are frequently revised or altered or completely disappeared, and the volume of teachings is just so massive that sifting through them is too big a task for most people. I read all of them multiple times when I was a Falun Gong believer up until around 2013.
Falun Gong teachings say that non-believers–called ‘ordinary people’–are pitiful, don’t know what they really need in life, are lost among desires, are covered in karma (a negative, black substance in another dimension) and are dirty. I’m not exaggerating, this is what the teachings say. All people who don’t believe in Falun Gong are going to hell unless Li Hongzhi saves them because there is no way for them to bear the suffering required to burn through all that karma and turn it into a good substance called virtue. Only the omnipotent Li has the power to do this, as he has done for his followers.
This is relevant because Falun Gong practitioners really can’t trust non-believers with the task they believe they have of saving sentient beings. Even though the organisation is getting richer and has experimented with hiring outside professionals such as dancers and musicians for Shen Yun, and young media graduates for The Epoch Times, this still poses a challenge because the organisation is unwilling to give non-believers a deep look into the workings of the organisation, or trust them with positions of responsibility. Almost all the work has to be done by Falun Gong practitioners, which means they are drawing from an already over-stretched group of believers. Resources are tight. There is often a crossover of resources with other Falun Gong projects, and you can find the same staff members popping up in a lot of them.
Falun Gong media sometimes refer to the handful of non-believers working for them in order to mislead people into thinking these organisations aren’t part of Falun Gong, but rather completely independent corporate entities with a few Falun Gong practitioners on their staff. But in all the examples I’ve seen, these non-believers are locked outside the fortress. A group of young graduates The Epoch Times hired in 2016, for example, were kept in a room separated from the rest of the editorial team by a locked door, according to NBC.
A good example is The Epoch Times commentator Ronald J. Rychlak, a Catholic who jumps whole-hog on board with The Epoch Times’ counter-attack of NBC News over NBC’s meticulously-researched articles which are critical of the Falun Gong media.
The Epoch Times isn’t trying to topple the Communist Party, Rychlak asserts. Workers at The Epoch Times aren’t mostly volunteers working there as part of their spiritual practice, he claims. Li Hongzhi “is not associated with the newspaper”, he says.
This last one–that Li isn’t associated with the newspaper–is a real clanger. Li has delivered lectures directly to Epoch Times workers and NTDTV workers, he refers to these media as “our media” and back around 2007 he directly fired their editorial teams–evidence of which can be found in his 2007 video lecture to Australian practitioners which is unfortunately now a secret teaching and hard to find.
The basis for all Rychlak’s inside knowledge? “I have toured the building that houses the Epoch Media Group and met several of the people who work there,” he writes. “They all seemed happy and friendly.”*
Perhaps Rychlak should ask some of those people about their belief that the god in charge of his own religion is evil. But if he did, he would get a sanitised response. There are strong teachings about fitting in with society, getting normal jobs, not coming across as over-zealous and not talking about “high-level teachings” with ordinary people. Falun Gong practitioners will do their best to hide these beliefs and won’t talk about them openly. And that applies also to the few non-believers like Rychlak that they have working on their projects.
Saving people from Communism
Most of Falun Gong’s teachings aren’t very palatable to non-believers, but there are some key messages Falun Gong practitioners are trying to get across as part of their core mission. This mission is saving people from an impending apocalyptic judgement day where people will be judged on two criteria — their positive thoughts towards Falun Gong and their negative thoughts towards the Chinese Communist Party which is seen as the embodiment of all evil in the cosmos. Positive thoughts towards the CCP and/or negative thoughts towards Falun Gong both bode very poorly for peoples’ futures, they believe.
These beliefs are strong and absolute. So what this means is you should find an absolutely, 100 per cent positive attitude towards Falun Gong in their media, and an absolutely 100 per cent negative attitude towards the CCP, and Communism more generally. There isn’t any room for grey areas in the teachings, so I think the presence of any kind of nuance towards Falun Gong or the CCP suggests the media is not purely a Falun Gong media and there is some arrangement that I don’t know about or understand.
This report by Chris Chappell gives the gist of just how black-and-white the attitudes of these media are towards Falun Gong. He’s a very likeable, funny guy, but unfortunately his coverage of Falun Gong is very censored indeed.
Rychlak, the above-mentioned commentator for The Epoch Times, simply refuses to believe that Falun Gong practitioners and their media are motivated by a spiritual mission to save people from Communism–which they see as a kind of evil possessing spectre. And he refuses to believe they see Donald Trump as sent by heaven to destroy the Communist Party.
They do believe this. The widely distributed Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party (published in 2004 and since superseded by other publications with a similar purpose) is seen by Falun Gong practitioners as a spiritual weapon that cleanses the spectre of Communism from peoples’ bodies, thereby saving them from the impending apocalypse. For years after it was published, excerpts from the Nine Commentaries were printed in every single edition of The Epoch Times, English and Chinese.
The Nine Commentaries was a key part of the Tuidang or “Quit the CCP” movement, launched by The Epoch Times and promoted directly by Falun Gong practitioners around the world, which encourages people to renounce their membership to any and all Communist organisations. Records of withdrawals are published at the domain tuidang.epochtimes.com.
And regarding Trump being a kind of angel sent from heaven to kill the CCP, a lot of people in the growing community of former Falun Gong practitioners have told me this is now widely believed in the community, no doubt due to a secret teaching that has been passed around but not published.
Ultra conservative beliefs
The attitude towards modern social phenomena is also very telling. You could look at the attitude towards homosexuality or abortion, which Falun Gong warns against, or evolution which it teaches is rubbish. Speaking negatively about these topics is controversial, so they’re usually just completely ignored.
Falun Gong also believes that while religion was good in the past and helped maintain human morality, the gods behind all religions are evil now, which is a relatively recent development, so you probably won’t find positive references to religions and religious experiences. Falun Gong practitioners don’t regard their belief as a religion, and their own belief is exempt from this policy.
However you will find coverage of persecuted religious groups in China like house Christians as this aids Falun Gong’s political motives. And sometimes the distinction between religion and traditional culture–which Falun Gong supports–might be ambiguous.
Shen Yun performances–also believed to cleanse the communist spectre from people’s bodies–are usually promoted where possible.
Enemies and friends
Another telling trait is the attitude towards certain specific people. Hillary Clinton, Kofi Annan, Jackie Chan, Zhang Yimou are some names I know Falun Gong has a specific gripe with and you are unlikely to find anything positive on them. It’s likely if they HAVE to cover them due to a specific news event they will do it very matter-of-factly. If it’s news wires that they’re using they will be edited from the originals to take out any positive prose. Falun Gong media are very careful not to accidentally promote someone who is perceived as anti-Falun Gong or pro-CCP.

Thanks @Anna. Long, but worth the read. It reads like a lot of ex-cult writings, but with a lot of clarity and insight, and leaves me with the impression that it is real. You always should wonder if it can be coming from a CCP member to discredit Falun Gong, for example, but it wouldn't make sense to hurt the reputation of the CCP at the same time. Also, it takes a long time to grow out of a cult, and this has all the earmarks of a true experience in that regard. (I once had several months of studies with a "Moonie" and got nowhere, and to get some of their hard-to-get publications, I once played along with the Scientologists in NYC who wanted to "study" with me. The mindset is clearly spelled out here.)
This person might even believe the organ harvesting happens, but it's odd that he would mention other specifics and "forget" this one which has been the standard narrative for several years before the above was written.
Without saying so directly, I think he does provide several credible reasons why Falun Gong might have felt justified in using that narrative dishonestly. Also, I notice that he implies that it is tied to the way people are converted. If he didn't believe it was true in China, then this was his opportunity to say so:
He admits that Falun Gong members lie to themselves and to others about their own beliefs that probably kill thousands of them. Teaching its members that the CCP itself kills thousands is a counter to this potential cognitive dissonance.
Also, why would Master Li be concerned with persons still having the "sin" of thinking good thoughts about the CCP? Who could have good thoughts about them if they had already bought into the narrative of organ harvesting?
To overcome the danger of being scrutinized, they would need to try to find medical professionals who will join them in promoting the organ harvesting narrative. The human rights narrative is necessary and useful for converting new practitioners.
I do believe the CCP campaign against FG is violent in that it probably jails proselytizing members and my guess is that hundreds or thousands have ended up in jail in China. Claiming that the government is the equivalent of Satan surely doesn't help their cause. This persecution creates the initial us/them narrative that is very useful to keep the group "tight-knit" and well controlled by a spiritual leaders. When the CCP lies about them, which invariably happens when local authorities don't quite understand the religious or psychological nature of the group, then the FG leadership (Master Li, living in the United States) now has supposed justification for fighting back with escalated lies. To a degree, it's happened with Moonies and Scientologists, too, as far as I can tell.

Not sure if it's OK but I am posting the story here. If not, the moderator can just delete it. There is a link to it in my previous comment. 30 minute read.
Me and Li — Why I left Falun Gong after being a devoted believer for a decade
by Ben Hurley
*"I wrote this story about three years ago, shortly after I made the decision to have nothing more to do with the meditation group Falun Gong. It’s taken me some time to summon up the courage to publish it. My apologies if some of the references are a little dated. I have published fiction on this blog but want to clarify that this particular article is completely true, except for the names of people which I’ve removed.
I think it was Lynn’s* death that finally made me realise it was time to leave. I’d seen the writing on the wall about a year prior when I saw her at a yearly “Fa conference” for believers of Falun Gong, otherwise known as Falun Dafa, to exchange experiences and grow spiritually together. An executive assistant at a Queensland valuation firm, I’d gotten to know her over the years in various events as a warm and level-headed lady who had time for everyone. But I’d noticed she had developed a bulge on the side of her head and I was trying not to look at it when I talked to her. I saw, or at least I believed I saw, some pain in her smile. She was probably questioning herself over and over again what “attachments” she hadn’t let go of that were causing this sickness to spread through her body and endanger her life. I wanted to tell her to just go to a hospital, although I wasn’t at this stage resolute enough in my gradual return to logic. Another part of me feared that by looking at it I was acknowledging it — something you don’t do with illnesses in Falun Gong because Master Li Hongzhi teaches that his pupils don’t get illnesses. He can cure you but only if you don’t have any loopholes in your belief in him and his teachings. Some people with solid beliefs can actually die due to others around them having flaws in their thinking, Li says. Just thinking the wrong way is perilous when you’re a Falun Gong practitioner.
I later heard through the grapevine of Lynn’s death. The cancer went into her brain and she passed away in extreme pain, probably believing to the end that it was her fault she was in this awful predicament. In a way, I guess it was.
She wasn’t the first Falun Gong practitioner I knew who died from an illness after refusing medical treatment. Another, Sarah*, did some gardening for my mother in Sydney for a while. She got along well with my mum and did a great job with the garden until her breast cancer became too severe. A staunch believer, she took on a number of big roles in Falun Gong organisations in Australia, including president of Free China and spokesperson for the Celestial Marching Band. She held out against medical treatment, finally accepting treatment when it was far too late. She had been spending her days not in a hospital but in pain in the living room of a family of practitioners, unable or unwilling to explain to the outside world why she hadn’t sought professional help. One of her last hurrahs was singing at a Falun Gong event, seated on a wheelchair on the stage. I listened to a recording and the music was cheery and full of hope. Quietly grieving her death, I called her mobile phone and listened to her answering message one last time, her calm and soothing voice, before deleting her contact number. I never told my wife or friends the truth about her death.
That Falun Gong practitioners frequently die from treatable medical conditions is one of Falun Gong’s dirtiest secrets. A lot of Falun Gong practitioners have died this way. I heard about deaths often when I was involved in the community, typically middle-aged or older practitioners dying of cancers they didn’t treat. These cases would come up in group “sharings”, where we would meet regularly and study scriptures together then talk about them. And they would come up on the email lists I was on. Usually it was a request for practitioners around the world to “send righteous thoughts” to “eliminate evil interference” that was causing this person to become ill. Word would quietly circulate later that the person hadn’t made it.
This was one of the Chinese government’s earliest criticisms of Falun Gong — that thousands of Falun Gong believers had died because they had refused medical help for treatable conditions. The Chinese government then went on to launch a whole range of more dubious accusations about self-immolation, murder and terrorism to justify its brutal campaign against the group — a campaign that continues to this day and has killed thousands. Falun Gong practitioners have continually countered that these claims are nothing but Communist Party propaganda. They have come up with ways to explain away Master Li Hongzhi’s very clear teachings against taking medicine. In fact, the Party was right about this phenomenon although I wouldn’t trust their numbers. Even in a more recent lecture, published on Falun Gong website Clearwisdom.net in May 2015, Master Li acknowledges the “many” deaths in the group and lays the blame squarely on those practitioners’ thoughts:
I can say confidently that anyone who has been involved with Falun Gong for more than a short length of time will have heard of — or directly witnessed — cases like this. But it’s an extremely delicate topic, uncomfortable even when there are only practitioners in the room. Any believing Falun Gong practitioner will hide this secret from non-believers. They’re not just hiding it because they don’t want their friends and family to know what a bizarre belief they have. They genuinely fear that by revealing it they will be giving someone a bad impression of the practice and damning them to hell.
A lot of medical professionals actually know about this, but for some reason it has escaped wider public scrutiny in the Western world. Maybe the noisy arguments between the Chinese Communist Party and Falun Gong have drowned out a more nuanced discussion of the half-truths and half-lies coming from both sides. I once met a nurse who had directly witnessed a dying Falun Gong practitioner refuse medication in hospital. And a while back when I sought some counselling on a few topics including this one, it turned out my counsellor, who was Taiwanese, had lost an aunt this way. She rode her cancer out to the end without palliative care.
Falun Gong dominated a decade of my life. It began innocently enough with a flier from a Chinese man in the Sydney CBD, which outlined some basic principles of the practice and talked about the situation in China. I went home and read more. I decided to join a local meditation site which went from 5am to 7am each morning, in a park only a block away from where I was living, overlooking Blackwattle Bay in Glebe beneath two giant fig trees. The people who taught me the exercises were friendly, interesting and unimposing. No money exchanged hands, and the materials were available online for free. It resonated with me deeply. In it I saw the spiritual guidance I had craved for so long, seemingly without the evangelical, charismatic bent that turned me off a lot of religions. I was wrong on these points, it turned out, but I guess by the time these aspects became obvious I already was quite devoted to the teachings. The intense workload demanded of every practitioner in promoting Falun Gong isn’t really discussed in the main book Zhuan Falun, but rather gradually unveiled bit by bit in later articles by Li.
I pushed myself with the exercises, eventually working up to being able to sit in full lotus position for a full hour — the desired length of time in Falun Gong exercise tutorials. Unfortunately after a few years, those people who taught me the practice those first days were either no longer practicing or still believing on some level but shunned by the community.
After a while I became involved with the community of Falun Gong practitioners in Thailand while travelling, which is where I deepened my belief. We’d exercise together at Lumpini Park in Bangkok, eat some delicious food, then some would leave for work while others stayed to read for a while.
The reading groups, usually in someone’s living room in the evening, were particularly warm in those early days. I’d cram into a room with mainland Chinese, Thais and visiting foreigners from various parts of the world. We’d all take turns to read paragraphs from Falun Gong teachings aloud in various languages while others followed along in their own languages. We’d chat for an hour or two afterwards about our lives and the problems we were facing.
But perhaps I’m wearing rose-tinted glasses here. When I returned to Australia, my family and friends were struck by how different I had become. I was intense and evangelical, and devoting most of my spare time to Falun Gong activities. My former curious interest in the many experiences the world had to offer had vanished. My social beliefs had transformed from those typical of a left-leaning family to take on a very conservative hue. I had a lot of explaining to do before people reluctantly came to accept the new me. I later observed other new Falun Gong practitioners go through a similar process. They would begin by shocking their family at their sudden change, then gradually learn to live the kind of double life typical of most practitioners. Many would get normal jobs. Most would find they had little in common with non-practitioners (“ordinary people” in Falun Gong parlance) but would maintain cordial relations with friends and family nonetheless, and think of various ways to explain the edge off some of Falun Gong’s less palatable teachings about aliens, how heaven views gay people, the inferiority of other religions and Master Li’s role in saving the universe.
During my time in Falun Gong I was involved in some of Falun Gong’s public outreach projects, with my biggest contribution being to The Epoch Times newspaper. Falun Gong practitioners have launched a range of media companies as part of what they see as their spiritual mission, including New Tang Dynasty Television, Sound of Hope Radio, and the Vision China Times. Their purpose is purely evangelical, although perhaps not in the way evangelical Christians might understand. Converting people to Falun Gong is not a priority right now — that will happen in the future, according to Master Li’s teachings — after an apocalyptic “weeding out” takes place where anyone who holds bad thoughts towards Falun Gong, or good thoughts towards the Chinese Communist Party, will come to a grisly end.
(Clearwisdom has published some very graphic descriptions of this day where practitioners describe visions that Master Li has given them of people being weeded out. “People were screaming in terror,” reads one [Last accessed 23/10/2017). “Mangled, dead bodies were everywhere. Next, the ground split open. Monsters were attacking people.” It goes on to describe the survivors being grateful to Dafa for sparing them.)
So the spiritual mission of all of Falun Gong’s projects is a kind of giant PR campaign to warm people to Falun Gong but not necessarily to convert them, and turn people away from the Communist Party — a representation in the human world of all that is truly evil in the cosmos. This intention is clear in any article in these media that is related to these topics, whether it be the satirical banter of Chris Chappell’s China Uncensored or the more stiff-collared serious journalism of The Epoch Times.
The Epoch Times Australia, English edition, began in the small Summer Hill living room of a Falun Gong couple, where a bunch of followers pieced it together with laptops while sitting on the floor. Somehow our ragtag army, with hardly any media experience among us, managed to put out a weekly newspaper that way. Later the English version joined the more successful Chinese-language paper in an upstairs office by the train tracks in Hurstville — a Chinese-dominated suburb of Southern Sydney. Some of the first editions had some laughable errors. But others weren’t that bad, considering the scant resources. I have no idea where the money came from to print thousands of newspapers a week, or to pay for the Reuters and AAP articles that filled them. Even less to pay for another media company, New Tang Dynasty Television — a satellite TV station. This was understandably kept a secret, since the Chinese Embassy was particularly active at that time in seeking out and pressuring any public supporters of Falun Gong. I was told it was a few wealthy benefactors. Some Falun Gong critics believe it came from the US government. I honestly don’t know, although I do know the editorial guidelines of The Epoch Times were very clear about being sympathetic to the US government.
It was hard work, with many late nights and red-eyed arguments as disagreements emerged over how the paper should be run. But there was warmth and camaraderie as well, particularly in the kitchen where volunteers would cook dinner and make tea for the team.
The prestigious editor position was a dubious promotion. It basically involved giving up your entire life for The Epoch Times, such was the time commitment. Without time to work, have a relationship or raise a family, the editor was typically a single person living off his or her own savings. One editor was a warm-natured and gentle guy who became a good friend of mine. He managed to hold this position for several years and I saw directly what a toll it took on his life, he was just tired all the time. At one point the then heads of The Epoch Times Australia decided to start paying him a very basic wage to meet his living expenses. Later Master Li directly intervened and ruled that it wasn’t OK for Epoch Times staff to be paid with the money that other practitioners had volunteered. My friend was suddenly in debt, and had to pay back the money he had been paid which totalled a significant sum that he didn’t have. Somehow his belief survived, despite this slap in the face after all the sweat and blood he had put into the paper. A few years later it became OK again for workers in Falun Gong media companies to receive a basic payment to allow them to do their work. Unilateral decisions like this were unquestionable, unchallengeable. Heaven had spoken. Continuing to follow Falun Gong involved a kind of slow murder-by-a-thousand-cuts of my free will, my independent logic. They were like tests from Master Li, sifting out the moderates and solidifying the zealots.
Master Li’s fingerprints were, in fact, all over the paper. There was one time when Master Li directly sacked a large number of Falun Gong media workers and appointed new people to take their place. But most of his influence was through a select few close followers who would then transmit his directives through the broader Falun Gong network. It was rarely made clear what, exactly, he had said, and whether it was, in fact, a Master Li directive or rather simply a decision of The Epoch Times board in New York. It was usually just described as a decision from New York.
There were so many examples of this, where any sense of the public’s right to know was trumped by Falun Gong dogma. In the early days of The Epoch Times Australia, we formulated the editorial code after a conference call with the head office in New York. It specified that we should report positively on public figures who had spoken positively of Falun Gong, and avoid negative coverage of these people if they were involved in scandals. We also should avoid positive coverage of people who had spoken badly of Falun Gong or were seen as too close to the Chinese government. Later when the Iraq War broke out we weren’t to question the United States’ involvement. We were to completely avoid coverage of anything to do with homosexuality. There were also some specific people who we absolutely weren’t to cover. One was Hillary Clinton, who was seen as having sold herself out to the Chinese government. Another was Kofi Annan, then head of the United Nations, which had something to do with him being a ghost or devil in another dimension. Jackie Chan and movie director Zhang Yimou were similarly seen as having sold out to the Communist Party. Due to the highly changeable nature of these kinds of directives, and my distance from the group now, I can’t say whether they are still in place today.
One email circular in particular made my blood boil. It dictated to all global Epoch Times staff how they should describe The Epoch Times, be it to the general public or their friends or family. We were not to reveal we were volunteers, as this would project an unprofessional image of the paper. And we were not to draw any association between The Epoch Times and Falun Gong. Rather, we should describe ourselves as staff, and there were suggestions about how we should answer the question about whether or not we were paid, while still adhering to Falun Gong’s teaching of “Truth”. I wrote an angry email over this and ignited something of an email controversy — not my first and not my last. How dare they tell me how I should describe something I was involved in to my own friends and family? And why was it necessary to deny a connection between Falun Gong and its media organisations? The Christian Science Monitor, for example, has shown it’s possible for a sometimes controversial religious group to openly run a respected media publication. Society is surprisingly open minded about this kind of thing if you have nothing to hide.
Later another circular demanded that every single Epoch Times staff member put themselves through an exhaustive grammar and writing course developed by the head office. It was weeks of work for an already highly over-worked (and mostly unpaid) team. And it taught a level of grammar that was technical to the point of being mostly superfluous for most media professionals, except perhaps sub-editors. It was irrelevant how much media experience you already had or how much time you had. It was a “one body” exercise, which is Falun Gong parlance for every believer being on the same page in thought and action. Practical outcomes (or the lack of them) took a back seat to the changes in other dimensions that we were bringing about through these kinds of actions.
One argument I never made in response to these directives might have been: How dare you give me orders when I’m giving you so much of my time for free and asking for nothing in return? But I knew that would have fallen on deaf ears. We were all being paid in “virtue” — a white substance in another dimension that you gain when you do good things and that leads to blessings in this life and the next. We would all later be paid with glorious futures. We all believed that, deeply.
Over time the control over content became increasingly detailed and iron-clad. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the reportage of dance group Shen Yun, which tours the world and performs in some high-class venues like New York’s Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts and London’s Royal Festival Hall. In terms of racking up blessings for your eternal existence, participating in the Shen Yun reporting team was about as good as it got. Every Shen Yun performance was viewed by Falun Gong practitioners as a monumental battle between good and evil in other dimensions, with the manifestation in this physical dimension being a little more mundane. A media team would assemble in a hotel room or apartment somewhere nearby the venue, ready to work through the night. Several reporters would go to the venue and do short interviews with audience members as they came out during intermission and after the show. Positive comments were taken down or recorded on video and then quickly written into articles and broadcast on various Falun Gong media outlets. Each outlet had its own set of standards which had presumedly come straight from Master Li. The Epoch Times had to get one article published online within half an hour of each show finishing, otherwise the battle in other dimensions had basically been lost for the night, and Shen Yun’s entire tour of that country was jeopardised. There was also a quota of articles that had to be written each night, which rose every year. High priority people were written up first — people who were well-known or esteemed in society — with the remainder written up through the night.
Whenever Shen Yun came to town, another team was devoted solely to taking care of the cosmic battle side of things. This team would sit in a room somewhere nearby with crossed legs and right hand held erect in front of their chests, “sending righteous thoughts” non-stop, day and night, to clear away the evil in other dimensions. People with full-time jobs would drop in for an hour or two after work, others would stay much longer, coming in day after day for hours on end. The local “assistant centre”, which was basically the satellite office for the central Falun Gong organisation in each city, would also stipulate that all that city’s Falun Gong practitioners should send righteous thoughts for 15 minutes at certain set times — typically three times each evening. This was in addition to the four global times that had been in place for years, corresponding to Beijing times of 6am, noon, 6pm and midnight.
I would dread the arrival of Shen Yun in Australia every year, because of the expectation that all practitioners there would basically put their lives on hold for the weeks or even months leading up to it to meet all these demands. I became increasingly angry that Falun Gong practitioners, who were already putting in so much of their time, were spending so much additional time sitting in rooms sending righteous thoughts rather than activities with more practical outcomes. I hoped Master Li might eventually inject some reason here in one of his talks, and sure enough in a July 2011 lecture in Washington DC he did address this issue. The problem, according to Master Li, was people like me:
In other words, people who thought it was a waste of time and were resentful while doing it were the problem. Another little piece of my faith died that day. We were talking about a cumulative 100 minutes every 24 hours that we were expected to do this, in addition to the hours of scripture reading and meditation that were crucial for anyone who considered him- or herself a true Falun Gong practitioner. And then on top of this the various projects that every Falun Gong practitioner had a cosmic responsibility to be part of. It was already impossible to get a good night’s sleep, and was getting harder and harder to maintain normal relations with society. This nagging voice deep in my mind became a little stronger — Master Li just wants to keep us all busy and tired.
It became increasingly clear to me as I worked on these media projects how hamstrung they were in achieving any real traction in society. Unable to trust non-believers with the spiritual mission of saving people, and unwilling to allow outsiders an inside view into the machinations of Falun Gong, these media could do nothing but continually draw from a very small pool of Falun Gong practitioners, typically with little or no media experience. And whatever good content they produced (I still feel the Shen Yun dances are beautiful to watch and the original orchestral music is lovely) it was overshadowed by the genuine weirdness of the Falun Gong propaganda inserted throughout, and the eccentricities of the practitioners themselves who had very few societal relations outside the Falun Gong community. In group sharings, for example, groups of Shen Yun ticket sellers would describe sneaking into office buildings without authorisation and working their way through floor-by-floor, desk-by-desk, handing out Shen Yun flyers and pressing people to buy tickets while ignoring requests from security to leave.
I don’t mean to represent Falun Gong as a rigid dictatorship. Some decisions like the above were made in assistant meetings that anyone could attend, although attending them meant giving up additional hours of my already scarce time each week and enduring the guilt trips that often pervaded them about how practitioners weren’t doing well enough and so many of the world’s people were doomed.
But a lot of them came from higher up, and the restrictions and time demands became more and more iron clad. Master Li’s authority was always there — elusive, ever-changing, unchallengeable.
This control extended into the personal lives of the broader Falun Gong community, and gradually I became locked out of the community for not participating to the extent demanded.
Twice when I was involved with Falun Gong, the entire global community was told to switch mobile phones. The first came after a number of practitioners around the world received anti-Falun Gong propaganda messages on their mobiles. The Chinese secret service knew all our numbers, we were told, and could listen in on us at any time. We would disrupt their database if we all changed numbers at the same time.
I did this the first time, and went through the inconvenience of telling all my friends and contacts my new mobile number. A year or so later we were directed to do the same thing again and this time I refused. It doubled as my work number and changing it was simply too much trouble. No problem, I was told, just carry two mobile phones — one for your dealings with the everyday world and one for your dealings with Falun Gong practitioners. Not to mention the expense and the annoyance of constantly having the weight of two phones in your pants, this was anathema to me as Falun Gong had previously promoted itself as a transparent and open group with nothing to hide. Naturally those communicating with practitioners in China should be cautious about security since those people faced threats and arrest if caught…but people like me, really? What on earth did I have to hide? For refusing to change my number, I was no longer welcome to call practitioners on their new numbers and did most of my communicating via email. Some Falun Gong practitioner friends of mine even adopted this strict policy with me, making it very hard for us to catch up.
Changing mobile phones en masse might seem extreme, but here, as in many areas of Falun Gong, there were shades of reasonableness underpinning the decision. It was true that frequently at Falun Gong events we would see stern-faced Chinese men follow us with cameras, monitoring our activities. They would often react angrily or run away when confronted. My mother once received a phone call from a Chinese-sounding woman telling her to stop me from practicing Falun Gong — who was she and how had she got hold of our home number? And then there were the propaganda messages that appeared all at once on practitioners’ mobile phones. And of course the allegations of widespread monitoring from Chinese government defectors like former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin. There was little doubt the Chinese government and its embassies abroad were monitoring the activities of Falun Gong, but it was impossible to say to what extent. Uncertainty bred fear, confusion and zealotry.
Another way I became edged out was through the “experience-sharing conferences” held by various cities and countries each year becoming much harder to get into, and not just because the seats were full. To get a ticket to attend, your local assistant had to vouch that you were a diligent practitioner who regularly attended group readings and sharings. I was extremely busy with my corporate job and looking after my mother who suffered from a degenerative disease. And I saw a lot of these sharings as unstructured, inefficient and wasting large amounts of already scarce time. Attending less than once a week made it hard for me to attend these conferences since I wasn’t deemed diligent enough. By that time I didn’t really care, but it did show to me how far Falun Gong had come in its shift towards an insular and controlling group that demanded a large time commitment, increasingly isolated its members from society and hid its inner workings from outside scrutiny. For the first few years I was involved with Falun Gong, these Fa conferences were open to anyone, whether they were practicing or not, giving a transparent, warts-and-all insight into Falun Gong for anyone who wanted it.
Falun Gong lurched closer and closer to being a structured organisation with an increasingly rigid heirarchy. In a July 2010 article called “Be More Diligent”, Master Li introduced a new directive that nobody was to challenge decisions by those higher up — be they heads of projects or people with positions of responsibility in the Falun Gong organisation — which upturned a previously loose and largely democratic organisational structure.
Falun Gong shifted in many other ways. It began as a group that made no claim against the validity of other major religions, but later Master Li asserted that the gods in charge of other religions had become evil and were interfering with his cosmic mission. He also specified rules for interacting with social groups like Chinese democracy advocates, which Falun Gong practitioners had some dealings with due to a common opposition to the actions of the Chinese government. In the heavily edited 2007 video lecture he released, called Teaching the Fa to Australian Practitioners, he chided his followers like children for opening up and sharing their problems with ordinary people. It’s very difficult for ordinary people to understand us, he said.
And then there was just simply the time commitment which became harder and harder to meet. As I said before, practitioners around the world were required to send righteous thoughts for 15 minutes four times a day — at 6am, 12pm, 6pm and 12am Beijing time. This meant getting up at 2am to do it every night, which disrupted my already insufficient sleep. In fact for years I consistently slept around five hours a night, often less. Master Li also frequently made alterations to his past works — often simply changing a few characters to others with slightly different meanings. It wasn’t ok to throw sacred texts like these in the rubbish, so practitioners were expected to go through their books page-by-page and use a razor blade to scratch out the now incorrect characters and glue the new ones over them. Hundreds of character changes in a 300-plus page book meant many, many hours of work. Another impractical and time-intensive directive that we were meant to spiritually grow through.
There was also a list of unofficial precepts that grew, in addition to the official ones like don’t drink alcohol and don’t kill anything. We had to finish all food on our plates or we’d have to eat it all as rotten food after we died. We shouldn’t eat raw meats like sashimi because that would cause resentful living entities to build up in our stomachs. We shouldn’t eat custard apples because they’re shaped like the Buddha’s head.
All up it pretty much ruled out doing things for the sake of doing them, which is where so much of the world’s creativity comes from. Hobbies, exercise, reading, travel — all became hard to justify when time and energy were so stretched. And as I started to gradually distance myself from Falun Gong and began taking these things up again, I battled with a lot of personal guilt and didn’t dare talk about them to other Falun Gong practitioners. Such innocent activities were frowned upon because it was wasting time that should be spent doing the “three things” that all Falun Gong practitioners should to — study scriptures, spread Li’s teachings and send righteous thoughts. Every interaction with someone, even just a chance encounter with a stranger on the street, is a chance to talk about Falun Gong, Li says.
Whether Master Li was living up to his own high standards for practitioners is hard to say. One practitioner who also left the group, William*, went to The Mountain and saw Li for himself. The Mountain is a large piece of land at Cuddebackville in the mountains near New York where Falun Gong-related temples have been built — again a departure from the earlier Falun Gong which claimed it wasn’t a religion for a range of reasons including that it had no temples or places of worship. Li spends a lot of time there overseeing the Shen Yun dancers who live there — mostly kids and young adults. Word has it The Mountain is a place where a wave of new disciples will go to learn Falun Gong after the apocalyptic weeding out.
But William was upset by a couple of things, and this story is interesting because genuine depictions of interactions with the reclusive Li are hard to come by. Firstly, Master Li was drinking a can of Coke. This was an affront to William since Li had always described himself as a man without any worldly attachments or desires, to the point that he was unable to find conversation interesting and couldn’t even tell whether or not food tasted good. Secondly, William saw Li berate the young dancers with a level of anger and intensity that shocked him, which was totally out of line with Li’s own teachings that we deal with people and each other using compassion. (Li’s videoed lecture to Australian practitioners, who had apparently been arguing too much, talked a lot about being compassionate to each other. He delivered it in an extra calm, smiling, slow- and soft-spoken, follow-my-example kind of way.)
Other people have attempted the topic of whether Falun Gong is a cult, so I’m not going to do that here. It’s kind of like a swearword that doesn’t actually mean anything specific to most of the people who use it. But I will make the point that Falun Gong is a much more secretive and controlling organisation than many people realise, it’s not a transparent group. While most of the core teachings are accessible for free on the websites, there are secret teachings and directives that are passed down verbally, and the discussions and forums that were once open to the public are now tightly controlled. Master Li’s published lectures and recent video are not simple transcriptions from the original talk, but rather are highly edited and redacted. All of Falun Gong’s websites, notably Clearwisdom.net which claims to be a forum for practitioners, are tightly curated. Master Li has made it clear that anyone who transcribes or records his talks and spreads them without his approval is undermining his practice which is a grave sin. And he has savagely criticised online Falun Gong-related forums like the Qingxin Discussion Forum where conversations among practitioners took place beyond his control.
While Falun Gong practitioners are technically free to come and go as they please, social pressures and deep spiritual fears become a strong staying force, in addition to social ties like marriages and children with other devout practitioners. Many, having given so much to Falun Gong, have little ties to society anymore and transitioning back would be a scary prospect. And then there is the shame, which I’ve felt deeply, of acknowledging to your friends and family that this thing you’ve talked up for so long has a darker side that you’ve said nothing about.
It’s taken me a long time to pluck up the courage to write this article. It’s a story I haven’t told in full to anyone. It’s not that I feared for my physical safety in writing this, the Falun Gong community isn’t like that. But I feared the judgement from the friends I have who still do it, and I feared being seen as an idiot by non-practicing people I’ve known all this time. I’m not a stupid guy — I’m well educated, I’ve got a good career and generally take a nuanced view of the world around me. This experience shows a childish, naive side of me; how rationality and dogma can exist side-by-side in one person’s head. And I have trouble explaining that to people.
But more than anything I deeply feared that by facing up to what I was seeing and feeling in Falun Gong I would face unimaginable punishment in this life and the afterlife. It was a heavy burden that ate away at me every hour of every day, and I think it can only be understood by others who have held a spiritual belief as deep as mine. The only time I truly felt safe from the consequences of a long list of sins I committed daily by simply going about my life was when I was sitting in meditation or reading Li’s writings. It’s a kind of blood debt Li has carefully cultivated in all of his followers and regularly reminds them of.
Falun Gong and the confusion I felt when I departed from it was probably the main factor that ended my marriage, even though my wife was not a Falun Gong practitioner. I felt like I was starting my life again and re-forming my worldview from scratch. I had to re-evaluate a lot of big choices I’d made. I saw no other way but to leave my old life and live overseas to do this quietly in my own time. I abandoned some relationships and rekindled others. I listened to music I used to like, took up pursuits I used to be into, got in touch with people I used to be close to. It was like re-connecting to a lifeline or a narrative that started to die when I took up Falun Gong.
But it wasn’t a total waste of time. One of the best things I got from my time in Falun Gong was to experience meditation and the clarity and warmth that can come from sitting with your eyes closed and calming everything down. Li doesn’t own that. Meditation makes me feel grateful, small, and motivated to salvage as much attention as I can garner to experience life. You could say I have my own religion now. It has only one follower and I don’t have to explain it to anyone.
Sometimes I wonder how these people think — the many Li Hongzhis that have appeared over the years as gurus, or charismatic salesmen, or just straight-out cons. People who can go at a goal with zero regard for the people they hurt along the way, including their staunchest believers. Li’s writings leap from glowing adulation to ‘stick warnings’ which in essence warn his followers they face eternal damnation if they don’t do what he says. When he delivers them to his followers the ensuing fear and self-recrimination really hurts. I wonder to what extent he actually believes his own teachings. If he hasn’t deluded himself into believing what he propagates, then he must know the extent of the fallacies he is peddling, and that would make him a cynical, nasty person indeed. His flawless confidence creates a kind of safe zone for people who struggle with the many shades of grey in the world. But in reality it’s not a safe zone at all.
It’s hard to explain, and hard for me now to understand, why I believed in such a crazy ideology, and for so long. In the same way it’s hard for me to understand why young people from around the world would give up everything they know and care about and join a repulsive group like ISIS. Their ideology makes no sense to me, the things they do make me sick. But I think I can relate a little to what’s going on in those young mens’ minds: the yearning for clarity, the search for meaning, the desire to belong, the willingness to make immense personal sacrifices for a cause bigger than they are. It’s a very deep place to snag someone, and potentially very dangerous. Logic, education, knowledge, human connection — all these things change from being moderating forces into tools for furthering the cause.
This article is in no way an attempt to justify the Chinese government’s ridiculous and violent campaign against Falun Gong. The many outright lies the Chinese government has told about the group have in some ways helped Falun Gong by giving the organisation a human rights narrative that allows it to not focus too closely on its own practices and beliefs. If only the Chinese government had just stuck to the facts. Falun Gong in many foreigners’ minds is associated with other freedom movements abroad, when in reality Falun Gong doesn’t give a stuff about other groups or about reform in China. In the world view of most Falun Gong practitioners, any movement that is trying to achieve an outcome in the human world — apart from Falun Gong’s various projects, that is — is engaging in dirty human politics.
Unfortunately the sympathy that many uninformed Westerners have towards Falun Gong has led to a kind of exasperated stand-off with a lot of Chinese people who justifiably feel that Falun Gong is just plain silly and that Westerners can never really understand China. This kind of thing drives a wedge between China and the rest of the world which is the last thing we need in an increasingly tense geopolitical climate.
The way Falun Gong defines itself to the public and to its own followers — as a health-focussed spiritual group concerned about human rights — is just not true. It made me less healthy, less happy, less kind, less compassionate. And it made me less truthful — to myself and others. Any spiritual growth that it may once have offered was left by the roadside as it morphed into a giant PR machine for a bullshit cause, exploiting a free labour force of exhausted zealots. Its goal now has nothing to do with meditation, spirituality or improving health. It’s just a political machine — Li’s project to amass power and influence and then shoot for whatever bizarre goal he thinks of next.
Finally I’ve left that sad little man in the dust. Me and Li are finished. And I’ve never been happier".

I added this here because we all need a primer or refresher now and then. At least I do. It's so easy to be pushed into topics like Trotskyism vs Leninsm, Hegelian Dialectic, Frankfurt School of Marxism, or to hear claims that BLM is Maoist, etc., without having first had a chance to understant even the basics. 
I once even heard a person say: Well, Hitler was socialist, right?
Hitler used the term National Socialist because he was trying for popular appeal, even though he never planned to allow even a bit of socialism into his plans. They were nearly the opposite. A very fascist, totalitarian, dictatorial regime that hated socialist policies.

Some of the recent topics here have touched upon the political systems of communism and socialism. I found a good write-up on those topics here. Later we can discuss its source, accuracy, any critiques, etc.:
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Socialism: a social system advocating State ownership and control of the means of production that communists view as an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism; Communism: a social system advocating the absence of classes, the common ownership of the means of production and subsistence, and the equitable distribution of economic goods. GREEK mythology tells of a Greek deity named Cronus, during whose reign Greece enjoyed a golden age. “All shared equally in the common lot, private property was unknown, and peace and harmony reigned undisturbed,” explains the Dictionary of the History of Ideas. The same source adds: “The first traces of socialism appear in the lament for a lost ‘Golden Age.’”
Not until the early and middle decades of the 19th century, however, did socialism make its appearance as a modern political movement. It found ready acceptance, especially in France, where the French Revolution had severely shaken conventional ideas. There, as in other European countries, the Industrial Revolution created harsh social problems. People were ripe for the idea that public rather than private ownership of resources would better enable the masses to share equally in the fruits of combined labor.
Socialism is not a new idea. Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato wrote about it. Later, during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, Thomas Müntzer, a radical German Catholic priest, demanded a classless society. But his views were controversial, especially his call for revolution, if necessary, in order to achieve this goal. In the 19th century, Welshman Robert Owen, Frenchmen Étienne Cabet and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and a number of other social reformers, among them prominent clergymen, taught that socialism was simply Christianity by another name.
The Utopias of Marx and More
But “none of these spokesmen for socialism,” says the above-mentioned reference work, “had an impact comparable to that exerted by Karl Marx, whose writings became the touchstone of socialist thinking and action.” Marx taught that by means of class struggle, history progresses step-by-step; once the ideal political system has been found, history in that sense will end. This ideal system will resolve the problems of previous societies. Everyone will live in peace, freedom, and prosperity, with no need for governments or military forces.
This sounds remarkably similar to what British statesman Sir Thomas More in 1516 described in his book Utopia. The word, a Greek name of More’s coining, means “no place” (ou-topos), and was possibly meant as a pun on the similar expression eu-topos, meaning “good place.” The Utopia about which More wrote was an imaginary country (no place) that was, nonetheless, an ideal country (good place). Thus, “Utopia” has come to mean “a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions.” More’s book was a clear indictment of the less than ideal economic and social conditions that prevailed during his time in Europe, especially in England, and that contributed later to the development of socialism.
Marx’s theories also mirrored the views of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. According to the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, “the apocalyptic, quasi-religious character of Marxian socialism was shaped by Hegel’s philosophical restatement of radical Christian theology.” Against this backdrop of “radical Christian theology,” explains author Georg Sabine, Marx developed “an exceedingly powerful moral appeal, backed by a quasi-religious conviction. It was nothing less than an appeal to join the march of civilization and right.” Socialism was the wave of the future; perhaps, some thought, it really was Christianity marching to victory under a new name!
The Road From Capitalism to Utopia
Marx lived to publish only the first volume of his work Das Kapital. The last two were edited and published in 1885 and 1894 respectively by his closest collaborator, Friedrich Engels, a German socialist philosopher. Das Kapital undertook to explain the historical background of capitalism, the economic system characteristic of Western-style representative democracy. Based on unregulated trade and competition without State control, capitalism as explained by Marx concentrates ownership of the means of production and distribution in private and corporate hands. According to Marx, capitalism produces a middle class and a working class, provoking antagonism between the two and leading to oppression of the latter. Using the works of orthodox economists to back up his views, Marx argued that capitalism is in reality undemocratic, and that socialism is the ultimate in democracy, benefiting the people by promoting human equality and freedom.
Utopia would be reached once the proletariat rose up in revolution and threw off the oppression of the bourgeoisie, setting up what Marx called a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” (See box, page 21.) His views, however, mellowed with time. He began allowing for two different concepts of revolution, one of a violent kind and the other of a more permanent, gradual kind. This raised an interesting question.
Utopia by Way of Revolution or Evolution?
“Communism” is derived from the Latin word communis, which means “common, belonging to all.” Like socialism, communism claims that free enterprise leads to unemployment, poverty, business cycles, and labor-management conflicts. The solution to these problems is to distribute the nation’s wealth more equally and justly.
But by the end of the last century, Marxists were already at odds about how to achieve these agreed-upon ends. In the early 1900’s, that part of the socialist movement that rejected violent revolution and advocated working within the parliamentary democratic system gained in strength, developing into what is now called democratic socialism. This is the socialism found today in democracies like the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and Britain. For all intents and purposes, these parties have rejected genuine Marxist thinking and are simply interested in creating a welfare state for their citizens.
One dedicated Marxist, however, who strongly believed that a communist Utopia could be achieved only by violent revolution was Lenin. His teachings, along with Marxism, serve as the basis for contemporary orthodox communism. Lenin, a pseudonym of Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, was born in 1870 in what is now the Soviet Union. In 1889 he converted to Marxism. After 1900, following a term of Siberian exile, he lived mostly in Western Europe. When the czarist regime was overthrown, he returned to Russia, founded the Russian Communist Party, and led the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Thereafter he served as the first head of the Soviet Union until his death in 1924. He saw the Communist Party as a highly disciplined, centralized group of revolutionists serving as the vanguard of the proletariat. The Mensheviks disagreed.—See box, page 21.
The line of demarcation between revolution and evolution is no longer so well-defined. In 1978 the book Comparing Political Systems: Power and Policy in Three Worlds observed: “Communism has become more ambivalent about how to achieve Socialist goals. . . . Differences between Communism and Democratic Socialism have been considerably lessened.” Now, in 1990, these words take on added meaning as communism undergoes drastic changes in Eastern Europe.
Communism Reintroduces Religion
“We need spiritual values . . . The moral values that religion generated and embodied for centuries can help in the work of renewal in our country, too.” Few people thought they would ever hear these words from the mouth of a general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. But on November 30, 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev announced this dramatic about-face toward religion during his visit to Italy.
. . .
“Glasnost” and “Perestroika”
Since the waning months of 1989, the Soviet Union and its fellow Communist governments in Eastern Europe have been experiencing mind-boggling political shakeups. Thanks to the policy of glasnost, or openness, these changes have been seen by all. East Europeans have demanded far-reaching reforms that, to a degree, have been granted. Communist leaders have admitted the need for a more humane and compassionate system and have called for a “rebirth of socialism in a different, more enlightened and efficient form,” as one Polish economist put it.
Chief among these leaders has been Gorbachev, who, shortly after coming to power in 1985, introduced the idea of perestroika (restructuring). During a visit to Italy, he defended perestroika as being necessary to meet the challenges of the 1990’s. He said: “Having embarked upon the road of radical reform, the socialist countries are crossing the line beyond which there is no return to the past. Nevertheless, it is wrong to insist, as many in the West do, that this is the collapse of socialism. On the contrary, it means that the socialist process in the world will pursue its further development in a multiplicity of forms.”
Communist leaders are therefore not ready to agree with the assessment made last year by columnist Charles Krauthammer, who wrote: “The perennial question that has preoccupied every political philosopher since Plato—what is the best form of governance?—has been answered. After a few millennia of trying every form of political system, we close this millennium with the sure knowledge that in liberal, pluralist capitalist democracy we have found what we have been looking for.”
However, the German newspaper Die Zeit candidly admits the sad picture Western-style democracy presents, calling attention to its “unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, prostitution, curtailment of social programs, tax reduction and budget deficits,” and then asks: “Is this really the perfect society that has forever triumphed over socialism?”
A familiar proverb says that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. What form of imperfect human government can afford to criticize the weaknesses of another? The facts show that the perfect human government—a Utopia—does not exist. Politicians are still looking for the “good place.” It is still “no place” to be found.
[Some notes and definitions]
Marx, born of Jewish parents in 1818 in what was then Prussia, was educated in Germany and worked there as a journalist; after 1849 he spent most of his life in London, where he died in 1883.
SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST TERMINOLOGY
BOLSHEVIKS/MENSHEVIKS: The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party founded in 1898 split into two groups in 1903; Bolsheviks, literally “members of the majority,” under Lenin, favored keeping the party small, with a limited number of disciplined revolutionaries; Mensheviks, meaning “members of the minority,” favored a larger party membership employing democratic methods.
BOURGEOISIE/PROLETARIAT: Marx taught that the proletariat (the working class) would overthrow the bourgeoisie (the middle class, including factory owners), establishing a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” thereby producing a classless society.
COMINTERN: Short for Communist International (or, Third International), an organization set up by Lenin in 1919 to promote communism; dissolved in 1943, it was preceded by the First International (1864-76), which gave birth to many European socialist groups, and the Second International (1889-1919), an international parliament of socialist parties.
COMMUNIST MANIFESTO: An 1848 statement by Marx and Engels of the principal tenets of scientific socialism that long served as a basis for European Socialist and Communist parties.
EUROCOMMUNISM: The communism of Western European Communist parties; independent of Soviet leadership and willing to serve in coalition governments, it argues that a “dictatorship of the proletariat” is no longer necessary.
SCIENTIFIC/UTOPIAN SOCIALISM: Terms used by Marx to distinguish between his teachings, supposedly based on a scientific examination of history and the workings of capitalism and the purely Utopian socialist teachings of his forerunners.

Alright, you’d better not be planning a putsch here.
The word was new to me just a few years ago, and I liked the sound of it, so I coined the college student Ted Putsch, who is majoring in government,  and who comes into the truth, in some ways has more common sense than his teacher (me).

JWs may have had a relatively late start here, but I couldn't be more proud of the manner in which it was used as soon as it was taken seriously. And this was a decade ago, not just for Covid19.
Even yesterday, I broke out an old TV streaming box (Roku) and one of the most popular apps on it, is still JW Broadcasting. And this isn't by specially searching for religious apps -- it's still listed as one of the most popular primary apps right up there in the top 50 or so, including Netflix, IMDB, NBC, FOX, etc.
I know that the LDS and 7DA have made use of the Internet in similar ways, but they have been outpaced for years by JW.org. You can also look at independent traffic monitors that look at all sites on the web, and find that for religious sites, jw.org is the number one site of its type.

I seem to have failed to write the word — perhaps, and than this or that. Perhaps she was late due to traffic jam.

Credible? It's Falun Gong. My opinion of Falun Gong is that they are laughably and ridiculously and incredibly incredible.
I have already expressed some of those opinions here, and we have never even gotten into most of their other incredible claims. But I will quote someone who has done some of the legwork here on the "China Tribunal" statement read by Hamid Sabi.
There are many sources and pieces to this, but they have been most clearly stated here on a website called the TheGrayZone.com :
The rest of this post will be quotes of large portions of the article, below, and I will highlight the portion related to the UN presentation, but the whole thing is here: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/09/30/reports-china-organ-harvesting-cult-falun-gong/
--------------
Reports on China ‘organ harvesting’ derive from front groups of far-right cult Falun Gong
Ryan McCarthySeptember 30, 2019 ChinaMedia A wave of corporate media reports on Chinese organ harvesting rely without acknowledgement on front groups connected to the far-right Falun Gong cult, whose followers believe “Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the Communist Party.”
By Ryan McCarthy
Western corporate media outlets have gone wild with claims that the Chinese state is “harvesting” the organs of ethnic minorities and political opposition figures. But an investigation by The Grayzone has found that these allegations originate from front groups run by the far-right opposition cult Falun Gong.
Falun Gong, whose devotees can often be seen clad in yellow and performing coordinated qi gong routines in crowded city centers, runs an ultra-conservative, staunchly pro-Donald Trump media network that has been compared to Alex Jones’ Infowars.
According to a former member of the fringe religious group, Falun Gong believes that an apocalyptic judgement day is soon approaching and “that Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the [Chinese] Communist Party.”
In order to understand, then, how heavily politicized rumors from an obscure far-right cult found their way into the headlines, it is essential to trace the roots of the story through an elaborate network of front groups.
In June 2019, a London-based organization called the China Tribunal published a report claiming that the Chinese government has been systematically executing and harvesting the organs of members of Falun Gong, a leading force of opposition to Beijing in the diaspora.
The China Tribunal describes itself as an “independent tribunal into forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China.” Most Western journalists took the organization at its word.
Up to and after it published the report, the China Tribunal received scattered coverage from various mainstream media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Guardian. In September, the coverage ramped up considerably after the China Tribunal presented its case to the UN Human Rights Council, with major outlets like The Independent and Reuters joining in.
One thing all this reporting has in common is that it assumes the China Tribunal is truly “independent.” On its website, the China Tribunal says that it was “initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international not for profit organisation, with headquarters in Australia and National Committees in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.”
So what is ETAC, really?
On ETAC’s website, one finds a “management” page with a list of people, devoid of any information except their names, photographs, and positions in the organization. The executive director and co-founder is Susie Hughes; Margo MacVicar is named as the New Zealand national manager; Rebecca James is the UK national manager for outreach, and so on.
Where do these figures come from, and what brought them together? The website has no bios. But follow the names, and it soon becomes apparent that there is another connection apart from ETAC — the Epoch Times.
A far-right anti-China propaganda network run by a cult
The Epoch Times, which uses the slogan “Truth and Tradition,” has marketed itself as just another conservative, pro-Trump media outlet.
But NBC News published a major exposé in August revealing it to be the media arm of the opposition cult Falun Gong. The report details the bizarre workings of the Falun Gong organization, showing how the Epoch Times is carving a place for itself in American right-wing media.
NBC News found that the Falun Gong website spent more than $1.5 million on roughly 11,000 pro-Trump advertisements on Facebook in just six months, “more than any organization outside of the Trump campaign itself, and more than most Democratic presidential candidates have spent on their own campaigns.”
[removed Falun Gong's swastika symbols, and their explanation] So where do the ETAC managers fit in with Falun Gong? Susie Hughes has photographer credits on several Epoch Times articles (her name seems to have been scrubbed, the photos merely credited to “The Epoch Times,” but the credit still shows up on Google searches at the time of writing). Margo MacVicar has numerous articles gushing about Shen Yun, Falun Gong’s traveling dance show. Rebecca “Becky” James shows up organizing a Falun Gong art exhibition in Bristol and sharing vegan drink recipes.
ETAC’s UK national manager for initiatives, Andy Moody, is credited by Epoch Times as a reporter for its sibling NTD, or New Tang Dynasty Television, Falun Gong’s TV arm. (Concerned Canadians have noted that the cult’s propaganda network has received millions of their tax dollars worth of disproportionate funding.)
ETAC’s UK communications coordinator Victoria Ledwidge appears in another Epoch Times article, coming to greet Shen Yun performers in London and, of course, acclaiming the “amazing” performance.
As one goes down the list of ETAC management, these Falun Gong connections spring up for almost everyone. ETAC is very clearly a Falun Gong front group.
Neither ETAC nor China Tribunal discloses these connections, but it hardly takes an intrepid investigative journalist to find them. So why was this level of basic research a step too far for, say, Owen Bowcott at the Guardian, who does little more than transmit ETAC’s talking points?
In fact, Falun Gong itself is actively spreading this “organ harvesting” rumor in major North American cities. The Grayzone’s Ben Norton saw some of the cult’s activists standing in central Toronto next to a giant banner titled “Stop Forced Live Organ Harvesting in China.”
They handed out pamphlets to passers-by declaring that the “Chinese Communist Regime Is Slaughtering Innocents” (using a painting as supposed evidence), while preaching about the “great health benefits” of Falun Gong.
The far-right cult is clearly using these rumors to proselytize and recruit new supporters.
‘Research’ overseen by a cult that sidelines real doctors
Turning to the China Tribunal’s report itself, it is apparent that, despite the authors’ claim to “have maintained distance and separation from ETAC in order to ensure their independence,” they rely heavily on information curated for them by ETAC.
The introduction, after describing ETAC as “a not-for-profit coalition of lawyers, medical professionals and others”, goes on to state that “ETAC’s main interest has been the alleged suffering of practitioners of ‘Falun Gong’, a group performing meditative exercises and pursuing Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, but regarded by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1999 as an ‘anti-humanitarian, anti-society and anti-science cult’.”
It is understandable that critics might hesitate to take the PRC’s characterization of Falun Gong at face value. But it is easy to make a fair evaluation of the group’s true character simply by perusing their own publications, where one will learn, for instance, that modern science was invented by aliens as part of a scheme to take over human bodies; or that feminism, environmentalism, and homosexuality are part of Satan’s plan to make us into communists; or that race-mixing severs our connection to the gods.
. . .
The report summary goes on to state: “Evidence was submitted by ETAC for the first hearing, amplified by further evidence following the first and second evidence hearings.” So despite framing their investigation as separate and independent of ETAC, the authors admit that they began with evidence fed to them by ETAC.
Their reliance on ETAC is further highlighted later when several doctors are named who expressed skepticism about the Falun Gong organ harvesting narrative. These doctors are listed as “doctors speaking favourably of the PRC.”
The report then states:
“All of these doctors were invited by the Tribunal to participate in the Tribunal’s proceedings. Their participation would have greatly assisted the Tribunal in its work; they all declined the invitations. Further, although each did contribute in person to a recent report by an Australian Government Committee their contributions have been subject to review by ETAC that reveals that they produced no hard evidence to support what they said and could be criticised for their methodology or their experience in transplant surgery.”
In other words, the China Tribunal didn’t see any need to consider their testimony, because ETAC had already looked at it and declared it to be bogus.
One of these doctors, Francis Delmonico, was contacted by the science journal Nature for its article on the China Tribunal’s report — a rare case of a dissenting opinion being registered, however grudgingly.
Delmonico was asked specifically for his opinion on a research paper cited by the China Tribunal, which was published on the scientific archive, SocArXiv, by Matthew Robinson – a research fellow of the famously impartial Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation:
“But Francis Delmonico, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says that although there is evidence that organs were taken from prisoners in the past — which he condemns — he is not convinced by the SocArXiv evidence because it is not direct. Delmonico is chair of the World Health Organization’s Task Force on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues and has been supporting organ-donation reform in China for more than a decade, although he made his comments to Nature in a personal capacity.”
Lobbyists for an anti-Iran cult go to bat for an anti-China one
The China Tribunal’s report is not the first alleging that the Chinese government is murdering Falun Gong prisoners en masse to harvest their organs. It relies heavily on an earlier document, known as the Kilgour-Matas report, which was initially released in 2006 and updated several times since then, with the title “Bloody Harvest.”
This previous report was commissioned by the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong in China. Unlike ETAC, CIPFG plainly states that it is a Falun Gong organization.
More interesting connections arise when probing the backgrounds of the co-authors of the report, David Kilgour and David Matas.
David Matas is the senior legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada, a right-wing pro-Israel lobby that works hard to tar any critique of the occupation of Palestine as anti-semitism. He was also . . . [4 paragraphs removed here]
So both authors of “Bloody Harvest” advocate on behalf of, not one, but two cults that also happen to be darlings of regime-change enthusiasts in and around Western governments. (The latest edition of “Bloody Harvest” includes a third co-author, Ethan Gutmann, who, notably, has been affiliated with the Gulf monarchy-funded Brookings Institution and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)
. . .
A few reporters notice Falun Gong’s seamy side
In March, Jia Tolentino published her impressions of Shen Yun in the New Yorker. Like the aforementioned NBC piece on the Epoch Times, Tolentino ‘s article shows that more and more people are noticing that there is something very odd about Falun Gong.
From the “baroque and surreal” Shen Yun dance-propaganda show, which bills itself as a last bastion of genuine Chinese culture, she moves to consider some other very troubling aspects of the Falun Gong organization, such as their penchant for resisting journalistic inquiry and harassing critics.
Tolentino also mentions a 2017 Washington Post investigation by Simon Denyer, which, while hardly a pro-PRC puff piece, casts serious doubt on the claims of the Kilgour-Matas report on organ harvesting.
Denyer may be the only journalist in the mainstream US press who conducted an independent investigation on organ harvesting in China and seriously questions Falun Gong’s organ harvesting narrative. Naturally, Ethan Gutmann felt compelled to run a rebuttal to Denyer’s report on ETAC’s website — and one can only imagine the kinds of emails and phone calls Denyer has been getting since he dared to publish that piece.
For most of the Western corporate media, the “Bloody Harvest” horror story is too ghoulishly titillating to subject to serious scrutiny, especially when the “Yellow Peril”-style villain is an increasingly powerful state threatening the old hegemonies.

Oh, that’s what she was talking about. I thought it was of individual JWs witnessing online..
Yes, the website is amazing and exactly the ticket since online is where people hang out these days.
I recall in the days before JW.org telling a workmate that we were online. She came back the next day, and it was clear that she didn’t want to hurt my feelings—she was ever so diplomatic as she told me that it sucked. Not any more. Now it is top of the pack. I wrote the following in Tom Irregardless and Me:
In recent years, the Watchtower organization even offers its own programming through a JW Broadcasting streaming channel, a refreshing and most unusual alternative to mainstream TV. Members of the Governing Body thus repeat the pattern they are known for with any new technology: They eye it with suspicion. They advise caution. They know that when the thief switches getaway cars, it is the thief you have to watch, not the dazzling features of the new car. They follow the thief for a time. Convinced at last that they still have a bead on him, they examine the car. They circle it warily, kicking the tires. At last satisfied, they jump in with both feet and put it to good uses its inventors could only have dreamed of.” 

Yeah... they are nothing to really celebrate are they?
Wouldn't it be better to improve the current government?
In this case they are leaving guidelines for a post-apocalyptic reader.....hmmm.....

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity. Unite humanity with a living new language. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court. Avoid petty laws and useless officials. Balance personal rights with social duties. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite. Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature. In other words:
1. Eliminate the vast majority of the earth's population. There are at least 7 billion people too many.
2. Use eugenics, but a little better than the way the Nazis did.
3. Open re-education centers to teach everyone a common language.
4. Replace excitement, religion and cultural traditions with things that a certain set of rulers accept as reasonable.
5. New World Order
6. New World Order
7. (OK. Revised Federalist Papers.)
8. Hmm. Don't allow personal (civil) rights unless they are earned.
9. A more secular definition of spirituality.
10. (OK. But not at the cost of 7 billion people.)
 

Funny. . . . and sad.

An inquisitive alien visits the planet to check on our progress as a species, and gets into a conversation with the first person he meets. The alien discovers that we live under the rule of a thing called "government", and wants to understand more about what "government" is, what it does, and why it exists.

What I remember is Ronald J Sider’s book ‘The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience—Why are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World.’
After reviewing dozens of verses on conduct, he says “if Paul is even close to being right on what it means to be a Christian, these verses ought to drive us to our knees in repentance, and then determination to reform.
He is an evangelical leader with suggestions for reform. Of course, they are of an organizational nature. And, of course, JWs are already doing them, and yes, they do resolve the problems he details.
I wrote several posts about this
The reason that people organize is so they can get more things done, and get them done effectively—an obvious plus when it comes to gathering, teaching, and shepherding a worldwide congregation.
The reason that people oppose such organization is that they do not want such things done. It is no more complicated than that.
And the reason the Christian organization applies for money that is legally owed it is....do I really have to explain this?
 

Probably I should not admit that I was halfway through the 47 -lecture Eastern Civilization course when you began this thread, and that without that new background, my meager contributions would have been more meager yet—perhaps confined to a rant about how Chinese Checkers is not as good as real checkers.

Well? Of course. The only verb that has probably been added is “demand.” Change it to “asserted that the consequences of the wrong classification should be addressed” and one could not expect anything else.
Maybe no religions should get state funding. Maybe no charitable organizations should. That is a separate issue. 
But if they do, and JWs alone were excluded due to a prior incorrect classification, then of course that should be rectified.

For sake of discussion. Old Jew Law written by Moses consisted of many legal acts, paragraphs. People who were supposed to deal with the problems of the nation and individuals needed to have a very good knowledge of the law and how the law should be applied in a particular case. So, it is normal to accept the reality of the fact that such "spiritual leaders" were in a way "lawyers", because a deep knowledge and understanding of the law, and its application, meant one thing: the implementation, the administration of justice.

What kind of "spiritual leaders" would be those who do not know the law and all the applications of the paragraph in that law. So, “spiritual leaders” had to study, think, and discuss the law with themselves and with other “spiritual leaders”. Therefore, we can conclude that these people were forerunner, part of a system, called today by a special vocabulary - “lawyers”.
"Biblical legislation," both that of the past and that which is related to Christianity, is based on "spirituality." This would mean that “spiritual leaders” do not have one role, for example to deal with questions of celebrated birthdays, holidays, whether 144,000 is a literal or symbolic number, whether a Christian is allowed to have a tattoo, whether Michael is Jesus Christ or not, and so on. “Spiritual leaders” prescribe and enforce decisions about the behavior of their members.
The behavior of the members is sometimes inconsistent with the "biblical legislation", and sometimes it is also inconsistent with the "secular" legislation. “Spiritual leaders” should be well acquainted with both types of legislation. For “secular” legislation is related to God’s decision, and explained in Romans 13. For the same reason both classes of people, “spiritual leaders” and “church members” must submit to “secular” legislation. And “spiritual leaders” since they are “leaders” to their “members,” then they must guide them not only through “biblical legislation” but also “secular” legislation. That means being a “leader”.

Not any longer. If your story does not suit their bias. Several authors have complained that their information online was changed and they could not change their own biography so that it ireflects the truth. It seems everything is now biased  and has an angle or opinion attached to it. Activists against Islam etc have had their bios changed in unflattering terms and there is NOTHING they can do about it. WIKIPEDIA now have people who scan new info.  
When Jeffrey Epstein was taken into prison his history exploded on internet.  His bio contained the names of his close friends and business partners.   These were immediately removed.... ...on wikipedia.... to protect the........ innocent ?

I will even manage to tie this is with the Voltaire kick that I’ve been on lately.
Voltaire was very taken with Newton’s discoveries and the idea that you derive truth from experience—in this case, truth about the universe from his experiments. Seems obvious to people now, but at the time truth was established by religious teachings and one did not think to look beyond them: What does the Church say about such-and-such? was as far as people went, or were even authorized to go.
Voltaire wrote it was “arrogant” to arrive at truth that way, and only common sense to arrive at truth Newton’s way. He could not possibly have foreseen that it becomes arrogant to think one can learn through experience, too—and this business with Wikipedia illustrates why. 
People choke on “experience.” There is far too much of it to process and we are far too puny to take it all in. It depends upon where we’ve been and what we’ve seen. 
Well, one ought to be able to rise above that—at first glance, that seems reasonable. Through study, reading, “critical thinking,” one can yet deduce truth. If there is one thing your exchange with Aruana proves to me, it is that even so we cannot—for the same reason: the sheer volume of what must be processed, and our insignificant time and ability to do it. 
Study the nature of water while it is in a test tube—yes, then it may be doable. But we dont get to study it in a test tube. We are forced to study it at the precipice that is Niagara Falls—as it cascades over us and overwhelms our instruments. 
If you and Aruana cannot convince each other—both of you with background, time, resources, experiences, and studious natures far in excess of the average person, then it cannot be done. 
And whereas the above illustration with Niagara Falls assumes, so far, that all sources are truthful, and open as what they are doing. they’re not. Everyone just assumes that Wikipedia is neutral, and thereby authoritative. It isn’t. Without explicitly lying, it effectively does so. By not presenting “the other side” of anything, it presents the picture that there is none. So it our determination to search for truth, hampered by the limitations already discussed, we also have to deal with the fact that people are trying to muddy the waters.
It goes back full circle. You can’t determine truth through religion, as Voltaire states? Sounds reasonable. But it turns out you cannot determine it by experience, either—it is equally “arrogant” to think we possess the resources that makes us up to the task. It turns out that you do determine it through religion. Of course, you have to have the right one, and that is mostly a matter of heart, not head.

Mostly I use Wikipedia for details on out-of-the-way topics that you wouldn’t think would be subject to bias—lately it has been to corroborate some background on Voltaire, for instance.
But not always—sometimes I use it as though a base stock, like you would in cooking, to develop a post on some contemporary issue. Others do this, too—pretty routinely—to provide backdrop for points they are making. @JW Insiderand @Araunaare doing that right now with a thread about China and its modern-day & changing role.
It’s an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is—that’s how everyone thinks of it. As such, it is unbiased—that supposedly is it’s mission statement. Anyone can edit it (I’ve never quite understood how that works—well, I guess I do, but I’ve never been interested enough to attempt it, and the premise is that when anyone can do so the result will be complete and unbiased.) Not so, says co-founder Larry Sanger. “Unbiased” went out the window long ago. NPOV (neutral point of view) Is a thing of the past.
He says it here, on this post from his own blog: https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
He doesn’t say the website is not factual. Nor does he say it is not objective. But it is not complete. It clearly sides with particular points-of-view. Larry offers about a dozen examples of clear bias, from politics, to science, to health, to religion in which the minority view is run off the road. 
Sigh...this seriously compromises Wikipedia as a base. It is a leftist choir that is preaching there these days, and if you quote the source, which I do all the time, you will be getting a leftist point of view, and other viewpoints either ignored completely or declared wrong. It is not for an encyclopedia to do this, Sanger says. It is supposed to reflect all points of view. It is not to declare a winner. 
Sanger’s background (per Wikipedia (!) ) is not primarily technology, as being co-founder of Wikipedia might imply. It is philosophy, epistomology, and ethics. He is clearly disappointed in the path his creation has taken. 
 
 

I disagree - as do child abuse prevention agencies.
Also see this article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/protecting-children-sexual-abuse/202008/language-matters-child-pornography-no-longer
Now to JTR. We do not know the exact nature of the material or the circumstances leading to his (alleged) possession or viewing of it, and I'm not going to speculate. I will be most interested in the outcome of his future trial, whichever way it goes. I'm sure other members here feel the same. As he was a frequent poster here, that outcome should, imo, be shared on this forum just as his arrest was. There's nothing shameful about posting publicly available, factual information on a person we interacted with and which could help explain his cryptic message and sudden absence, @Thinking. The shame is in being arrested for that crime.
I just hope his family and the (alleged) victims are coping OK because this whole saga must be turning their worlds upside-down. Too often we focus on the accused and forget the other lives upended by this.