Posts by fulltimestudent

20

Congrats Australia votes yes gay marriage! Awesome!

by Witness 007 in

well done aussie's 60% voted yes.

i really did not think this would happen here there is alot of gay phobia.

i saw men on the streets holding signs "vote no.

fulltimestudent

Just a sidelight - but I need to background it, for all you 'non-Aussies.'

First we have,Tony Abbott. A former (very) conservative Prime Minister ( a bit like one D.Trump), who was dumped by his own party when surveys started showing voters were starting to think he was a dickhead. Tony does have a gay sister, but was probably the highest profile campaigner for a 'NO vote', even though his own daughter publically announced she would vote YES!!

Now Tony, who in his student days gained a reputation for slamming opponents in student politics, against walls and threatening them with worse, was also once a novice priest and is still very much a supporter of the church.

Tony, in his younger days also gained a reputation for liking to be photographed in his swimming briefs (that Aussies often refer to as "budgie smugglers," as in this pik:

What did that particular peculiarity really mean? Sorry I just don't get it.

Now the second man. Here we have a man who was once Australia's highest profile catholic, and having come under some unwelcome suspicion as having had a specific liking for younger boys, found himself promoted to be the catholic church's top money man at the vatican. This is Cardinal George Pell in all his glorious finery.

and ....

I don't know if Georgie boy did anything to any kid, but certainly it seems that he likely knew of priests who did, and did nothing to prevent it. I guess the current court hearing will decide the validity of any police information.

Georgie boy and Tony were good friends. Tony took a lot of notice of what George thought and said, and recently dismissed the allegations of possible child abuse, telling us that George was a really fine man. Some people saw the relationship differently as the satirical image explains:

So to come (at last) to the point, after the successful YES vote announcement on wednesday, an artist painted this picture on a wall, at Newtown's ( a gay locality) Botany View Hotel.

Within hours some (apparently) Christian Terrorists arrived and white-washed the Cardinal Pell caricature in the painting, but leaving the Tony A image untouched.

Apparently, some Christians are sore losers, but I guess most of us learnt that quite some time ago.

22

Did Being a JW Make You a Better Person?

by Boredposter in

i heard many times when i was a witness how much "learning the truth" helped people.

many have been said to have become much better people.

addictions were given up.

fulltimestudent

Grin - did being a witness make be better in some way? Well, it did make me poorer, but yeah, there were some positive aspects. But the financial cost (which must be affecting a lot of older people) is easily the most negative thing about my near 50 years of delusion.

I don't think I ever experienced the negative aspects of witness life that some here complain about. Of course, there were some witnesses that could easily rub you up the wrong way, but I think I realised that's the case in all walks of life.

On the positive side, as an inexperienced 17 y.o. that couldn't concentrate very well, I had to learn to study hard.

And, a bit on the shy side, I had to learn to approach people and start conversations. A handy ability! (Always hated door-to-door though - a rather useless activity). But I did learn how to work a room and meet people. Maybe I would've learned to do that in some other field, but the fact is that I learned it as a witness.

However, I think the most important 'character' forming thing I learnt was caring for people. That doesn't fit the way many people here see the witnesses, and that may be because Aussies tend to be bit more laid back than the national characteristics of some other nationalities.

Anyway, I always tried to care for the folk in the congregations associated with. Being an elder isn't always conducive to that. I considered standing down as an E once, and had a chat with Max Lloyd, then on the branch committee. He told me that some elders ran round with bits of paper in their hand arranging things and some were real servants always doing something for someone. In Max's view both were neccessary. I only wanted to be the 'serving' kind, although in my secular work I loved organising things and I think that I was a good manager. Maybe that was part of me before I became a witness, but even so I honed that skill as a witness.

I decided not to attend the meeting when my disfellowshipping was announced, but I was told that there were many tears, so maybe I was seen as caring - just sorry now, that part of that caring involved trying to help people continue serving the YHWH/JESUS duo and thus waste their lives like I was doing.

And none of those (supposedly useful) things can disguise the fact that I wasted my bloody life trying to be like Jeeeeezuuuuz and wasted the lives of all the people that I may have helped.

32

A Korean Tragedy

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the modern history is full of deep, dark tragedies.

and, my intention, as i sat down to write of those tragedies for a fb page i look after for a macquarie university student society, was to tell the story of these very dark contemporary events.

but east asia history is complex and i think its helpful to try to have an overview of that history to understand what has happened in the recent past.

fulltimestudent

And in the north ...

Its likely difficult to imagine ourselves in the Korean milieu of 1945. And it is even more difficult to imagine the northern sector, effectively under Soviet Russian control from some point in August/September 1945.

Most Koreans were still involved in small scale subsistence farming, the Japanese had developed heavy industry in the north of the peninsula, so that 65% of the peninsula’s heavy industry was in the north, and the Koreans employed in the mines, hydro-electric plants, steel mills etc. could be described as an industrial working class. In contrast, only 37% of agriculture was located in the north. The border areas between Korean and Manchuria had also been the chosen location for resistance fighters against the Japanese colonisers. One other unique feature, now almost forgotten is that the northwest of Korea, and centred in the Pyongyang area, was a Christian stronghold.

During August, 1945 People’s Committees associated with the Korean People’s Republic movement had also been formed in the Pyongyang area, so the Russian army entering Pyongyang on August 8, 1945, found a People’s Committee, led by longtime Christian nationalist, Cho Man-sik, already functioning. Unlike the American army in the south, the Russians accepted the People’s Committees and the idea of the Korean People’s Republic. Some accounts suggest that Cho Man-sik was the first choice of the Russians as a potential leader of a government in the north.

On September 19, Kim Il-sung and 36 other Koreans who had fled to Russian territory after harassment by the Japanese Army, arrived in Wonsan. On October 14, the Soviet army introduced Kim to the population as a guerrilla hero.

In December 1945, at a conference in Moscow, the Russians agreed to an American proposal for a trusteeship for five years before independence for Korea. Under Soviet pressure, Kim and other Communists supported the Moscow agreement, but Cho Man-suk opposed it publically and the Russians placed him under house arrest. In December 1945, existing Communist groups were combined intp a new North Korean Communist Party, and later in August 1946 the NK Communist Party was merged with the New People’s Party to form the Worker’s Party of North Korea. In December an election was held and an alliance of the Worker’s Party and other groups won the election.

32

A Korean Tragedy

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the modern history is full of deep, dark tragedies.

and, my intention, as i sat down to write of those tragedies for a fb page i look after for a macquarie university student society, was to tell the story of these very dark contemporary events.

but east asia history is complex and i think its helpful to try to have an overview of that history to understand what has happened in the recent past.

fulltimestudent

The two ‘new’ occupying armies, the USA and the USSR that now controlled Korea, shared one goal – both wanted to influence the political form of an independent Korea would be friendly to their own concept of world security. Already, it seemed the Americans had quickly assumed an outlook that saw communism as a monolithic force controlled by Stalin’s USSR, rather than a grouping of localized nationalist and socialist movements each with unique historical roots founded in patriotic opposition to European/ American colonization.

That view was likely founded on advice (to the American Military) from the conquered Japanese government sectors that had controlled captive Korea, to the effect that an alliance of communists and independence agitators were attempting to take control of Korea. So its not surprising that General J.R.Hodge, commanding the American forces in South Korea, had orders not to recognize any form of independent Korean government, but to establish a USA Army authorized Military Government in Korea.

Faced with the task of forming a government, Hodge first called on existing Japanese officials from colonial days, which led to a vociferous resistance from Koreans. Hodge then turned to Koreans who had served in the Japanese Colonial Administration, most of whom were judged to be former Japanese collaborators. So sadly right from the start of the USA’s military government, many Koreans were dismayed by American insensitivity. Tensions were created that persist to this day in the political make-up of the eventual Republic of Korea.

Hodge had a difficult job. The only people who had governance experience were discredited, in the eyes of most Koreans, by their association with colonising Japan.

A new conservative political party was formed, the Korean Democratic Party, founded by a group of wealthy landowners and businessmen. The Military government then set about closing down the Korean Peoples Republic organization and branches, which led to often violent protests. To counter the protests, the American Military Government used a police force that included thousands of Koreans that just months before had been serving and upholding the authority of the Japanese Colonial Government. These ex-servants of the Japanese State worked alongside American servicemen to suppress the unrest. By the end of 1946 most localized rebellions were controlled, except one major rebellion, which we must come back to at a later point.

7

The True Heir of the Roman Empire was not the Anglosphere, or Western Europe - It was the Russian Imperial Empire.

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

may i recommend this podcast discussing the russian revolution.

its made by a the conversation, an academic web-site, and features interviews with a number of historians.

i recommend it because an in-depth knowledge of history will protect your thinking from the shallow historical interpretation evident in the jws concept of a progression of world powers and the view of ww1 being a world war.

fulltimestudent

Crazyguy, I'd like to explain the reasoning.

First I used the term 'Imperial Russia' to differentiate the USSR from the Russia of the czars. Although to be descriptively accurate, terms like Imperial and Empire are often used very loosely, Russia was self-declared to be an empire in the 18th century. It did however, exist in similar form prior to the Romanovs. But that's a side issue to my comments on the JW approach to history as demonstrated in their teachings on the King of the North and the King of the South.

Leaving to one side the question of whether or not we are reading a genuine prophecy in the Bible, I wanted to show how Franz's explanation of how these so-called prophetic titles changed in later history is not accurate.

As I recall Franz's book, the King of the North became Russia (in modern times) through the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire. Historically I cant see that as true, because anyone who examines Byzantine (the Eastern Roman Empire) history knows how closely eastern Europe and Russia are linked (particularly culturally) to the Byzantine Empire.

By the fall of Byzantium to the Ottomans, Russia had a accepted a general Byzantine culture, particularly in combining an acceptance of autocracy and in combining church and state. Moscow was seen as the third Rome. And, even all those years of atheistic teaching by the Russian Communist Party does not seem to have weakened those attitudes. In contemporary Russia, the Orthodox church seems as strong as ever.

The whole K of the N, versus the K of the S, is just a fairy story, but I wanted to point out how a lack of historical knowledge can lead people astray. We could probably point out similar flaws in Franz's, the King of the South explanations. Starting from Egypt, he traces the defeat of Prolemaic Egypt by the Romans, and then connects England to Egypt by the Roman occupation of England. So is Rome, the King of the North or the King of the South? Rather tenuous isn't it?

Confusing! Why? Because once we assume that the Book of Daniel was written around the 5th Century BCE and is therefore prophetic, we will have a problem of making it fit the real world. IF we accept that it was written much closer to the Christian era, and the so-called prophecy was not prophecy but just relating known history (masquerading as prophecy), then we wont even try to fir it into modern history.

Of course, the witnesses are not the only Krazy Kristians that try to interpret the Book of Danial document as history, there are plenty of others out there in the world of today.

And finally your comment:

Early Russia around Moscow was controlled by the Vikings other northern Russia cities were under their control too.

Yes, because the Russians (or many of them) were Vikings.

Quote: "The traditional beginning of Russian history is 862 A.D. Kievan Rus', the first united East Slavic state, was founded in 882. The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988, beginning with the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Slavic culture for the next millennium."

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia

7

The True Heir of the Roman Empire was not the Anglosphere, or Western Europe - It was the Russian Imperial Empire.

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

may i recommend this podcast discussing the russian revolution.

its made by a the conversation, an academic web-site, and features interviews with a number of historians.

i recommend it because an in-depth knowledge of history will protect your thinking from the shallow historical interpretation evident in the jws concept of a progression of world powers and the view of ww1 being a world war.

fulltimestudent

Crazyguy : Imperial Russia came on the seen about 300 years after the fall of the eastern Roman Empire.

OK Let's test that. Byzantium fell to the Ottomans in 1453, and you want to locate the development of Imperial Russia some 300 years later. Is that correct?

The Western Empire did not just morph into the Holy Roman Empire. In 476 Germanic tribes under Odoacer sacked Rome and Oadacer claimed the title Emperor. But what followed was not traditional Rome. Traditionally, historians see 476 as the end of the Western Roman Empire. Charlemagne's efforts attempted to draw on the West Roman Imperial traditions, but it was not a direct lineal descendent.

7

The True Heir of the Roman Empire was not the Anglosphere, or Western Europe - It was the Russian Imperial Empire.

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

may i recommend this podcast discussing the russian revolution.

its made by a the conversation, an academic web-site, and features interviews with a number of historians.

i recommend it because an in-depth knowledge of history will protect your thinking from the shallow historical interpretation evident in the jws concept of a progression of world powers and the view of ww1 being a world war.

fulltimestudent

May I recommend this podcast discussing the Russian Revolution. Its made by a The Conversation, an academic web-site, and features interviews with a number of historians. I recommend it because an in-depth knowledge of history will protect your thinking from the shallow historical interpretation evident in the Jws concept of a progression of World Powers and the view of WW1 being a world war. It was not. It was the last gasp of European Imperialism.

(To be clear that opinion is mine and not a conclusion reached in the podcast)

https://theconversation.com/anthill-18-revisiting-the-russian-revolution-86284?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%2086537194&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%2086537194+CID_7cbc31deab768caa5e5be950c89940af&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Anthill%2018%20Revisiting%20the%20Russian%20Revolution

Soviet revolutionaries attacking the Csar's police in 1917.

The Russian Revolution swept away a political tradition that was 2000 years old, not only sweeping away the last remnants of the Roman Empire,* but also changing the course of modern history.

Leninist Propaganda Poster

While few people in the Anglosphere or the more advance economies of the west would feel stirred by the slogan, "Пролетарии всех стран, объединяйтесь!," because the Russian Revolution forced those nations to improve social living conditions for their citizens, the peoples living in third world conditions may still feel the need to revolt. Generally speaking, people need to be hungry and desperate before they will revolt.

*Rome (In Italy) was swept away by invaders from the Asia Steppe, but survived as the Eastern Roman Empire ( also known as the Byzantine Empire) which was eventually destroyed by the Islamic Ottoman Empire, but survived in the form of Imperial Russia.

32

A Korean Tragedy

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the modern history is full of deep, dark tragedies.

and, my intention, as i sat down to write of those tragedies for a fb page i look after for a macquarie university student society, was to tell the story of these very dark contemporary events.

but east asia history is complex and i think its helpful to try to have an overview of that history to understand what has happened in the recent past.

fulltimestudent

Cofty: I have read the same in Frank Dikotter's trilogy on Mao and in Paul French's book "North Korea, State of Paranoia".

Thnx Cofty, I think that its a common belief, but Mikoyan gives some interesting details concerning the attitudes of the Soviets and China (in conjunction) to the methods used by Kim Il-sung to eliminate rivals and to take complete control of the Korean Workers Party. I assume this may be a reference to the death of Ho Ka-i, who Andrei Lankov calls, the "Forgotten Founding Father of the KWP.

As far as can be known, there were a number of factions in the DPRK. In addition to the Soviet faction (as above) there was a group identified as the Yanan faction, men who'd been in China during the war against the Japanese. Another group had been in Manchuria, others who had managed to stay in Korea itself for the war, and still others like Kim who the Japanese had managed to drive out of the Manchurian-Korean border zone and who had eventually fled to Russia for refuge. What their differences were, or their similarities may not be understood clearly.

Ho was an ethnic Korean born in Russia, who became the leader of the Soviet Korean faction in the first political structures in what we call NK. Ho and Kim seem to have had a falling out, that may have started in 1951. It is thought that the failure of the NK army to totally defeat the South Koreans in the first weeks of the war (You'll likely recall that they drove the SK army into a small 50 x 50 mile section around the Port city of Busan) . That gave the USA and its allies the opportunity to provide reinforcements to the south and in Macarthur's quite brilliant Inchon landing, allowed a pincer movement that almost destroyed the NK army, and since Kim Il-song had always pushed for a military solution (but so had Syngman Rhee) he may have copped a lot of flak. That nearly caused the defeat of the North and became the source of much internal stress and conflict at high levels within the KWP and the NK government. In any event Ho was supposed to have committed suicide, but may have been murdered.

Mikoyan also mentions that the Soviets and China made an attempt to assassinate Kim Il-sung. That surely must have influenced attitudes and behaviour for a long time

Whether, this can all be regarded as dependable, is (of course) a different matter.

32

A Korean Tragedy

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the modern history is full of deep, dark tragedies.

and, my intention, as i sat down to write of those tragedies for a fb page i look after for a macquarie university student society, was to tell the story of these very dark contemporary events.

but east asia history is complex and i think its helpful to try to have an overview of that history to understand what has happened in the recent past.

fulltimestudent

One thing I believe I should have added to my last post detailing the political leanings of the (almost) stillborn Korean People’s Republic was this: It is sometimes stated that the speed with which ordinary Koreans formed associated grassroots structures was itself evidence of Communist influence. The reasoning here is that no-one else had the necessary organizing skills to form these grassroots organisations so quickly. I can’t comment as to whether or not the Korean Communist groups had such widespread organising skills. They may have, or they may not have, had such skills.

But it is not necessary to look past an existing community system in East Asia, the system is known in China as Hukou and often translated as “household registration.” In Japan it is called koseki, and it seems to be the (possibly) traditional system which the Japanese used as a basis for the their 1940 action of organizing all of Korea into some 350,000 ‘Neighbour Patriotic Associations. Each basic grouping consisted of ten households and became the basic unit for a variety of Japanese government programs such as collecting contributions for the war effort, recruitment of labour, rationing and maintaining local security.

These groups would still have been in existence in 1945 and as Japanese control collapsed, could quickly have become the basis for the local ‘peoples committees’ of the ‘Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence.’ To me that’s a far simpler explanation for the speed with which these ‘peoples committees’ were established, to the more difficult explanation that somehow the various Communist groups were so well organized that within three months they had the numerical strength to form and control these grassroots committees.

We can now examine, why the Korean People’s Republic failed, at least in part.

The USA and USSR were allies in WW2, not because of any great love for each other, but for entirely pragmatic reasons. But time was to show that the alliance was an aberration.

Between 1918 and 1920, the USA had sent a contingent of 9,000 troops to Siberia to support the rightwing White Movement and its goal of crushing the Russian Revolution. That war effort failed, defeated by the communist’s Red Army and in 1922, the USSR came into operation, However, generally the USA and most Western Powers had an anti-Communist stance.

As already noted, pragmatism brought something of a change in attitude during WW2. During the war it seems the ‘West’ was willing to cede some territory to the USSR if the USSR would enter the Pacific theatre of the war and help defeat Japan. The death of Franklin Roosevelt, the ascension of Truman to the Presidency, the successful development of a nuclear weapon, the imminent defeat of Japan and maybe most of all, the successful Russian entry into the war and its capture of vast amounts of East Asian territory seems to have caused a re-think in American government circles.

No-one in the American government seems to have had much concern for the Koreans from the time of the previously mentioned Taft-Katsura Memorandum of 1905 until Japan finally surrendered. The text-book Korea: Old and New suggests that the USA was willing to allow the USSR control of all of Korea and Manchuria in return for participation in the war against Japan. And, as events turned out, nothing could have prevented the USSR military from taking control of all of Korea in August 1945. An American army contingent could not have been moved into Korea in time to prevent a Soviet occupation of all of Korea.

On August 10-11 1945, at a meeting of the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee a decision was made to attempt the division of the Korean Peninsula into two separate occupation zones. It was decided to try and make the dividing border the thirty-eighth parallel, because it placed Seoul in the American zone. The offer was put to the Russians, and to the surprise of the American planners the Russians agreed. Even so, it took until September 8 for an American military force to arrive in Korea.

So there at last we see the beginnings of the present stand-off between North and South Korea. Both occupation forces were confronted with the existence of the KPR, the Korean people’s own preference.

How would the two military occupational forces react to the nascent formation of a free and independent Korea?

32

A Korean Tragedy

by fulltimestudent in

jw
friends

the modern history is full of deep, dark tragedies.

and, my intention, as i sat down to write of those tragedies for a fb page i look after for a macquarie university student society, was to tell the story of these very dark contemporary events.

but east asia history is complex and i think its helpful to try to have an overview of that history to understand what has happened in the recent past.

fulltimestudent

To review the fate of the Korean People’s Republic, I intend to rely on a text book, that was used as the main textbook in the one year (two study topics) of study on Korea that I undertook at Sydney Uni. The textbook is called, ‘Korea: Old and New,’ published in 1990 by Ilchokak Publishers for the Korea Institute, Harvard University.

There were five contributing authors:

Carter J. Eckert, Associate Professor of Modern Korean History, Harvard University.

Ki-baik Lee, Professor of History, Hallym University, Korea.

Young Ick Lew, Also a Professor of History at Hallym University, Korea.

Michael Robinson, Associate Professor of History at the University of Southern California

Edward Wagner, Professor of Korean Studies at Harvard University.

I mention those details, so that if anyone feels there is bias in any further statements, they may check for themselves as to the legitimacy of the authors.

The bright hopes of Korean nationalism were to be wrecked in the break-up of the war-time alliance between Russia (as the USSR) and the USA.

It’s useful at this point to attempt to discern the political leanings of that nascent Korean People’s Republic. Later American and South Korean political wisdom has it that the Republic was controlled by Communists. But the above publication states that still later scholarship dissents from that view. Why? There certainly were a large number of communists involved, but the later view is that it was a genuine ‘people’s movement’ with a leftist tendency. (Could we compare it to Atlee’s Labour government in the UK, that came to power in 1945?) (For more detail see 'Korea: Old and New'. pp 330-332). A review of the cabinet posts indicates that many right wing Koreans were to hold office. For example Kim Song-su was one such old time right winger. And the appointment of Syngman Rhee as Chairman (even though he was not physically in Korea), is also indicative of an effort to produce a genuine political coalition of Right and Left. Rhee later became President of South Korea, and can certainly be described as ‘anti-communist.’

From August through to November, 1945 the Korean People’s Republic, in conjunction with local groups dismantled the former Japanese Colonial Administration and expelled Koreans who had collaborated with the Japanese and began instituting a 27 point program that had been agreed to by the new Government.. If that program had held, it would certainly have been radical, in that it would have changed Korean Society, as traditional land-holders (who had often collaborated with the Japanese) would have lost their property rights.

The above authors of Korea: Old and New, suggest that the 27 point program was a reasonable reflection of the hopes of ordinary Koreans.