I notice that some of you mentioned that reading books by Ray Franz was a major influence. I purchased his Conflict book and read sections of it, but my impression was that much of what he said (such as claims of what took place in governing body meetings) are not claims which I could test. I was impressed by some other statements in his book, but not enough to prevent me from selling the book. What evidence did you folks find in Ray's books that was important to you?
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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Disillusioned JW
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A group of 136 countries set a minimum global tax rate of 15% for big corporations
by Disillusioned JW ina group of 136 countries set a minimum global tax rate of 15% for big corporations.
that is a major goal accomplished by the biden administration.
seehttps://www.wsj.com/articles/countries-agree-to-global-deal-to-curb-tax-avoidance-11633709979 .. if corresponding legislation gets passed into law in the usa it will be much harder for corporations doing business in the usa to move their operations out of the usa to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
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Disillusioned JW
A group of 136 countries set a minimum global tax rate of 15% for big corporations. That is a major goal accomplished by the Biden administration. Seehttps://www.wsj.com/articles/countries-agree-to-global-deal-to-curb-tax-avoidance-11633709979 .
If corresponding legislation gets passed into law in the USA it will be much harder for corporations doing business in the USA to move their operations out of the USA to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. It also would prevent those corporations with operations in the USA from having their headquarters outside of the USA as a successful way to avoid paying federal taxes (meaning they would have to pay the tax despite having their headquarters outside of the USA). Making corporations pay at least some amount of tax is something Elizabeth Warren campaigned for as a Presidential candidate for the Democratic party nomination. It is also what Joe Biden wanted. This is great news for USA workers.
The article says the following.
"Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the floor set by the global minimum tax was a victory for the U.S. and its ability to raise money from companies. She urged Congress to move swiftly to enact the international tax proposals it has been debating, which would help pay for extending the expanded child tax credit and climate-change initiatives, among other policies.
... the signatories will have to change their national laws and amend international treaties to put the overhaul into practice. The signatories set 2023 as a target for implementation, which tax experts said was an ambitious goal."
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Steven Hassan on CNN today
by dropoffyourkeylee ina little surprised to see steven hassan interviewed today on cnn about the anti-vax believers and cult tactics.
here is the link:.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/10/02/steven-hassan-cult-misinformation-anti-vaxxers-ndwknd-vpx.cnn.
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Disillusioned JW
Thanks Pete Zahut for your post. People with the weird ideas you gave examples of should read a book by Carl Sagan called The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. The book is copyright 1996. The back cover of a paperback edition from 1997 gives a good description of the book - one that is relevant to the discussion about Covid-19 vaccines. It says the following.
"How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience, New Age thinking, and fundamentalist zealotry and the testable hypotheses of science?
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healings, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today’s so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning, with stories of alien abduction, "channeling" past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms."
Chapter one of the book says the following.
"As amusing as some of pseudoscience may seem, as confident as we may be that we would never be so gullible as to be swept up by such a doctrine, we know it's happening all around us. Transcendental Meditation and Aum Shinriko seem to have attracted a large number of accomplished people, some with advanced degrees in physics or engineering. These are not doctrines for nitwits. Something else is going on.
What's more, no one interested in what religions are and how they begin can ignore them. While vast barriers may seem to stretch between a local, single-focus contention of pseudoscience and something like a world religion, the partitions are very thin."
In chapter two Sagan says the following.
"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."
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In the UK it is legal to abort a Down's Syndrome baby up until the moment of birth
by LoveUniHateExams inthere was a recent legal challenge, brought about by a woman who herself has down's, which sought to overturn this sad state of affairs.. and a few days ago, a judge upheld the original law and denied her legal challenge.
this is pretty sick, don't you think?.
pro-abortion people love to ridicule religious people who claim that life begins at conception, so the obvious question is, when does life actually begin?.
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Disillusioned JW
According to the OT Bible Yahweh/Jehovah when he was mad with the adult Israelites/Judahites and adult people of some other nations, he sometimes told his prophets that as punishment the wombs of pregnant women would be cut open (and thus that the babies inside would killed) and that very young children already born would be killed. Thus, according to the OT Bible Yahweh ordered and arranged people to carry out such executions (such as by arranging enemy nations of the Jews to do such). Thus, according to the Bible Yahweh is an abortionist and a murder of the very young.
Also, in the Bible Yahweh sometimes ordered the Jews to kill all of the people (including the children) of some of the Canaanite city states, even all of the cattle/livestock. Thus the account says Yahweh ordered abortions of human infants.
In the Bible children (including those in the womb) were viewed as property of their fathers. Thus when Yahweh (according to the Bible) ordered the executions, it was from the perspective of emotionally hurting the parents of those human fetuses and embryos and the already born children. In at least one case it was also due to disapproval of an infant in the womb, namely in the case of the first child conceived jointly by David and Bathsheba.
If you reject all abortions of human babies as evil, then you should also reject the God the Bible as evil. Further, you should then also reject the "Holy" (so-called) book of the Jewish religion and of Christianity as also evil and reject their religions.
Conservative/fundamentalist/evangelical Christians wake up!
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Steven Hassan on CNN today
by dropoffyourkeylee ina little surprised to see steven hassan interviewed today on cnn about the anti-vax believers and cult tactics.
here is the link:.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/10/02/steven-hassan-cult-misinformation-anti-vaxxers-ndwknd-vpx.cnn.
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Disillusioned JW
MeanMrMustard, there is an update regarding the percentage of medical staff who are refusing to get a Covid-19 vaccine. The percentage has now dropped to only 8%. See https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/nyregion/vaccine-health-care-workers-mandate.html which has the title of "Thousands of N.Y. Health Care Workers Get Vaccinated Ahead of Deadline".
["Published Sept. 28, 2021 Updated Oct. 4, 2021"] The article says the following.
"New York State’s pioneering effort to force health care workers to receive coronavirus vaccines appears to have pressured thousands of holdouts to receive last-minute shots, though hospitals and nursing homes continue to brace for potential staffing shortages should the mandate fall short, according to state and industry officials.
As the vaccination mandate went into full effect on Monday, 92 percent of the state’s more than 650,000 hospital and nursing home workers had received at least one vaccine dose, state officials said. That was a significant increase from a week ago, when 82 percent of the state’s nursing home workers and at least 84 percent of hospital workers had received at least one dose.
The jump in vaccinations in the days before the deadline gave New York one of the highest rates of vaccination among health care workers nationally. It was also a positive sign that President Biden’s planned federal vaccination mandate for most health care workers might buoy rates nationwide."
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Steven Hassan on CNN today
by dropoffyourkeylee ina little surprised to see steven hassan interviewed today on cnn about the anti-vax believers and cult tactics.
here is the link:.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/10/02/steven-hassan-cult-misinformation-anti-vaxxers-ndwknd-vpx.cnn.
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Disillusioned JW
Months ago I heard of some nurses refusing to take the vaccine and that gave me concern, but I found little information about their reasons and the news media (at least the kind I access) discredited their actions. When I told a Human Resources woman at work about it (before I got the vaccine) she said most nurses have no more than very little knowledge about medicine and thus she discredited the choice of those nurses. Also when I told the pharmacist who was administering the vaccine to me, about those nurses and others having concerns about the vaccine, he dismissed them as anti-vaxers.
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Steven Hassan on CNN today
by dropoffyourkeylee ina little surprised to see steven hassan interviewed today on cnn about the anti-vax believers and cult tactics.
here is the link:.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/10/02/steven-hassan-cult-misinformation-anti-vaxxers-ndwknd-vpx.cnn.
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Disillusioned JW
MeanMrMustard, regarding the official Covid-19 documents that are publicly accessible on the FDA website which you specifically mentioned, maybe I will access those documents at some point, especially after the government says I qualify for a Covid-19 booster shot. Currently I am not enthusiastic about taking a Covid-19 booster shot.
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Steven Hassan on CNN today
by dropoffyourkeylee ina little surprised to see steven hassan interviewed today on cnn about the anti-vax believers and cult tactics.
here is the link:.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/10/02/steven-hassan-cult-misinformation-anti-vaxxers-ndwknd-vpx.cnn.
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Disillusioned JW
MeanMrMustard, I judge science by examining science and what scientists say are their discoveries of science. Scientologists (as a group) are not scientists, though they might have some members who are scientists (though not scientists of Scientology since Scientology is not a true science).
I determine what many conservatives believe and say about conservatism by examining a sample of statements made by a sample of conservatives (such as a number of people on this web site and a number of conservative spokespeople in the news media).
Regarding your question about Richard Spencer, I don't think I read anything by him nor ever listened to him. But, I determine what neo-Nazi people and antisemitic conspiracy theorists believe by reading a number of their writings on those subjects and by listening to some of what they have said on those subjects. For example, I have read a portion (in English) of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf's autobiography book, a portion (in English) of some of his speeches, and the political platform of the American Nazi Party (ANP).
dropoffyourkeylee, thanks for creating this forum topic and for posting the link to the video about Steven Hassan. Despite a number of the views posting in this forum topic about that video, I agree with what Steven Hassan said in the CNN video.
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Steven Hassan on CNN today
by dropoffyourkeylee ina little surprised to see steven hassan interviewed today on cnn about the anti-vax believers and cult tactics.
here is the link:.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/10/02/steven-hassan-cult-misinformation-anti-vaxxers-ndwknd-vpx.cnn.
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Disillusioned JW
Hi MeanMrMustard. A person I personally know, whom I have heard warning people not to take a Covid19 vaccine, and who listens to a talk show program on a Christian AM radio station which says numerous scary things about the Covid-19 vaccines, told me that according to the people on that program I will probably be dead in 6 months. That is part of the reason why I said that some anti-Covid-19-vaccers say people (including me) will become dead within 6 months after taking the vaccines, or at least have severe problems within 4 months (not four weeks). Also a medical doctor in Canada has videos in which he say that many people who took the vaccines (which he had administered) very soon developed serious clots in their capillaries and he said that within 4 years (I think that was the length of time he stated) that about 2/3 of the people receiving a Covid-19 vaccine will be dead as a result. That is also part of the reason that I said what I said about being dead (or severely harmed) in 6 months.
Like you, I also am not in favor of mandatory vaccines.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me about my post.
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Steven Hassan on CNN today
by dropoffyourkeylee ina little surprised to see steven hassan interviewed today on cnn about the anti-vax believers and cult tactics.
here is the link:.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/10/02/steven-hassan-cult-misinformation-anti-vaxxers-ndwknd-vpx.cnn.
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Disillusioned JW
Hi pistolpete. You made many good points in your reply to me; I appreciate that. But regarding the claim of whether or not I recognize the difference between anti-vaxers and those who choose to specifically not take any Covid-19 vaccine, at least the ones currently available, at least for the time being, consider the following.
I know that not everyone who is against taking the Covid-19 vaccine is an anti-vaxer. I thus did not create an error in logic in that matter. I know that many people who have taken vaccines in the past and who intend to take them in the future, specifically chose not to take (at least for now) a Covid-19 vaccine.I apologize for not making it clear in my earlier post that there is a difference between being an anti-vaxer and from being specifically against taking a Covid-19 vaccine.
I know that many of those who chose not take the Covid-19 vaccine did so as a result of ample research on the subject. But I also know there is a lot of disinformation on some social media sites, probably especially sites where people earn money by getting many people to view their comments (including videos) and to post favorable comments about such content. I also understand it can be very hard to decide what information is correct or incorrect or a combination of the two.
Even I was initially hesitant to take any of the Covid-19 vaccines. Also before taking any other vaccine (such as a flu vaccine and tetanus or TDAP vaccine) as a adult I did research about how those vaccines are made and about their degree of safety before taking them.
Regarding degrees I have a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration. I had wanted to get a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering and to become an engineer/inventor but it didn't work out. Since early childhood I also wanted to make a major scientific discovery and to be an inventor. I congratulate you on your two degrees.