Our aim? To rally other ex Jehovah’s Witnesses to stand up and support Haitian Earthquake survivors. When we were still Jehovah’s Witnesses few if any of us ever donated humanitarian aid. Any aid that was given through the world headquarters of the Watchtower Society was primarily given only to other Jehovah’s Witnesses to the exclusion of anyone and everyone else. And as individuals we were discouraged from donating to other “secular” aid organizations. In fact, during times of disaster or calamity we were often excited, thinking that world events were catalysts to the “end of the system of things.” No longer suffering from that delusion, we can recognize this disaster for what it is and pitch in to help.

In the aftermath of this horrendous disaster the Watchtower Society made an official statement saying that they are praying for the Witnesses in Haiti. It remains to be seen if they will ‘offer’ anything else, or if they will contribute to the desperate population at large.

Those millions of us around the world who have freed ourselves from the destructive organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses now have the opportunity to help our fellow man. We no longer need sit on the sidelines and watch this devastation occur and do absolutely nothing about it. We have rejoined humanity and now we can assist it. We do not need an organization to make us moral people. We have the ability to think for ourselves and do what’s right at the right time.

I ask you now to join me by donating to those in need in Haiti. We have setup a website that will provide information about a number of charities that we believe can offer the most immediate assistance and the most impact to those on the ground, right now. The website is called exjws4haiti.com. We will not be accepting donations directly, but will provide you with information and direct links to make donations directly to the relief organizations. This way aid will reach the people who need it much faster and without any interference or delays. Thanks to modern technology we will be able to keep track of donations and will post that information regularly on the website.

Our purpose is simple. We are aiming to mobilize our community. We are calling out to our peers, other former Jehovah’s Witnesses from all walks of life. Often, we consider ourselves victims, but right now we can rise up and be givers. Please join us in making a donation to aid organizations who can provide relief and support to Haitian Earthquake survivors.

From one human being to another, thank you in advance for your generosity. We never know when the tables might be turned and it is you or I who need the charity of others. I hope that never is the case but please, if you are able, help Haiti.

www.exjws4haiti.com

On December 31, at about 1:30 p.m. Edgardo Rosario found his wife dead in the snow near the church she attended, The Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, located at 2520 Wesleyan Drive.

There were no signs of foul play.

Edgardo Rosario had called police on Sunday, Dec. 27 to report his wife Robin Rosario missing.

She was last seen on the evening of Dec. 26 - Rosario believed his wife was in bed but later found pillows under blankets placed to make it appear she was there.

Police has said that Rosario left all her belongings at the house and may have been suicidal.

The Anchorage Police Department’s Auxiliary Search Team conducted a search of the area around their home on Wesleyan Drive, as well as wooded areas nearby, but were unable to locate Rosario.

The Medical Examiner’s office will conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death; however, upon preliminary investigation, it appears as though she succumbed to exposure.

The Watchtower’s huge real estate portfolio in Brooklyn consists of a huge chunk of DUMBO, the old Bossert Hotel on Montague Street, as well as waterfront property facing Pier 1 below the (Brooklyn) Heights. They also own buildings at Bridge Plaza.

The Watchtower Society, owns a staggering amount of Brooklyn real estate, and is certainly the largest single property owner in the Brooklyn Heights area.

But will the Watchtower remain in Brooklyn?  With the economic downturn it seems that for the moment the Watchtower is staying put. But they are not expected to remain for long. Quite recently the organization has acquired 248 acres in Ramapo, N.Y., about 45 miles north of New York City. The $11.5 million site will reportedly someday house more than half of the organizations 1,500-person administrative staff.  Additionally the Watchtower is in the process of buying another 253 acres near their Wallkill printing plant (a little over 40 miles north west of NYC). This will be the 4th major land acquisition in as many years.

The organization currently has eight other buildings (located in the Brooklyn Heights) on the market, including the Bossert. But according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle it is very likely that when the economy and real estate market improves, the Witnesses will sell their DUMBO locations, as well as their buildings on Sands Street.

Another jewel in their real estate portfolio is their waterfront building near Old Fulton, which has been long coveted by residential developers. Area developers look to it as a future source of operating revenue for the community, perhaps as a conference center or hotel.

What is clear is that despite the massive property holdings in Brooklyn, they are nothing compared to the hundreds and hundreds of acres owned in more rural areas of NY and NJ.

According to an article in The Brooklyn Paper back in April of 2009, Richard Devine, a Watchtower spokesperson said regarding the Ramapo acreage, “We would like to build a live-work complex”.

Until now, the Watchtower’s residential and publishing facilities in Brooklyn have remained separate. Combining both facilities at one remote upstate site would create a huge, centralized religious compound.

It seems highly likely that the Watchtower Society will continue the trend of selling off its highly valuable Brooklyn real estate as the market improves, predictably moving their operations and residences to the more cost efficient properties upstate.

One can only imagine the equity the organization has built in those NY properties over the years, it seems the time has come to cash-in.

Photos of some Watchtower property in Brooklyn, N.Y.

DUMBO

Watchtower Tennis Courts at DUMBO

Watchtower owned, Bossert Hotel

Lobby inside the Bossert Hotel, owned by the Watchtower

Recently, a page out of the September 2008 Watchtower was brought to my attention. I’m including the scan here for quick reference.  It really requires little commentary other than to point out item number two.

You’ll notice that “higher education at a university” is lumped in with smoking cigarettes and drug and alcohol use to name just a few.

Since the scanned image is small, I’ve reprinted it below:

What will be the “End Afterward”?

Young people are often exposed to temptations and pressures to experiment with things that seem popular. Here are some likely scenarios.

• Someone dares you to smoke a cigarette.
• A well-intentioned teacher urges you to pursue higher education at a university.
• You are invited to a party where alcohol and possibly drugs will be freely available.
• “Why don’t you post your profile on the Internet?” someone suggests.
• A friend invites you to watch a movie that features violence or immorality.

If you are ever confronted with any of such situations, what will you do? Will you simply give in, or will you carefully consider what the “end afterward” could be? You would be wise to ask yourself: “Can a man rake together fire into his bosom and yet his very garments not be burned? Or can a man walk upon the coals and his feet themselves not be scorched?”—Proverbs 6:27,28.

The writers of the Watchtower magazine have the audacity to group higher education in with detrimental activities such as drug use and smoking.  While they don’t overtly state that Jehovah’s Witness youth are forbidden from seeking post-secondary education, they use persuasive (albeit erroneous) metaphors such as the one used above—lighting your clothing on fire and getting burned—as a way to discourage the pursuit of education. With constant repetition of messages such as these, they effectively brand something as wrong, bad or foolhardy.

I can attest to the fact that as a young person I was not permitted to go to college or university after I graduated high school.  I was an honor student and indeed recall several conversations with teachers and counselors all urging me to continue my education. To be honest, I was excited at that prospect after speaking with my teachers, but my parents would not support me or allow me to pursue that goal. Instead I auxiliary pioneered after graduation.  From personal experience I can honestly say that college or university was highly frowned upon in the congregation. At the time, when I was still a witness, I knew of no one in my congregation who had continued their education beyond high school (or at least no one who openly admitted it).  Sadly it seems that nothing has changed in the last 10 years.

Articles—such as the one from which this excerpt was taken—and messages from the platform are repeated over and over again and reinforce the cult’s anti-education position. It becomes part of the fabric of the belief system of the rank and file. The end result is that bright children are denied an education that they have a constitutional right to obtain. They are robbed of knowledge, kept in the darkness of ignorance, and quite commonly live out their lives enduring the mediocrity of a low-paying job which must support not only their families but their ‘donations’ to the church.

You can see another example of this kind of anti-education indoctrination in this video, recorded at a convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R4f9ygxDbk

Bulgaria Church Organizes Anti-Jehovah’s Witnesses March

Article by, Novinite.com

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is organizing on October 11 a march in the northeastern city of Dobrich against the planned international congress of Jehovah’s Witnesses there.

The Congress is also planned for October 11.

The Church is joined by the political parties VMRO and Bulgarian New Democracy. At their Thursday press conference the organizers voiced hope Dobrich’s citizens will also take part in the march.

VMRO have suspicions Jehovah’s Witnesses will attempt to turn Dobrich in one of their main hubs for disseminating ideas and recruit people and point out the sect is banned in several European countries. In Bulgaria the Jehovah’s Witnesses have official registration since 1998.

The Bulgarian Orthodox church says the religious movement ideas are dangerous and directed against the official government over their stand against national symbols, blood transfusion and others.

The sect is active in the city of Dobrich and has their own educational center while the local authorities and the Prosecutor have failed to react so far, VMRO alarm.

Article Source: The National Post

A Witness account

By Tom Blackwell, National Post
September 28, 2009

The boy was just five years old and desperately ill, but as he crouched in the back seat of Donna Ryder’s car, he became more fugitive than cancer patient.

Police in New Brunswick were already out looking for the child when, according to Ms. Ryder, she hid him and his mother in her Dodge Omni and drove them to Fredericton, away from children’s aid officials who might have forced the son of Jehovah’s Witnesses to accept a blood transfusion.

Fellow officials of the Church then took over, whisking the child to their Canadian headquarters, she says. The patient and his family ended up eventually in Mexico for alternative treatments that abided by the sect’s controversial — and vigorously enforced — ban on receiving blood. He died soon after.

It was a particularly dramatic episode, but Ms. Ryder alleges that the Church regularly transports sick children far from the reach of child welfare authorities — and the possibility of forced transfusions — before the cases can turn into high-profile court battles.

Witnesses stake out the hospital rooms of children around the clock, mostly to offer support but sometimes hustling the patients away when it seems likely an attempt will be made to impose a transfusion, charged Ms. Ryder, who did legal work on Witness cases for several years before leaving the church.

“It makes me feel ill when I recall my part in that,” said the 58-year-old, now a social work student at Ryerson University. “I was terrified I was going to get arrested…. When a doctor says a child needs a blood transfusion to live, that becomes a necessity of life. To work behind closed doors and under the rug to spirit the child away is not protection, it’s illegal.”

Though her experiences with the Witnesses ended in the mid-1990s, the Toronto resident offered a rare inside, and on-the-record, perspective on the church’s alleged tactics, just weeks after the release of a landmark court decision triggered by ongoing tension between the sect’s religious beliefs and the medical care of young children.

If what she said about moving patients from jurisdiction to jurisdiction is accurate, it would mean the church’s governing Watchtower Bible and Tract Society was essentially overriding the state’s mandate to safeguard children, said one legal expert who studies the Witnesses.

Ms. Ryder’s allegations were firmly dismissed, however, by a top church official, who said the Witnesses as an organization never transport children to avoid legal action, though parents may choose to take them to a health-care facility or practitioner who is willing to provide treatment without blood.

“Treatment options are a personal decision of parents,” Warren Shewfelt, the Witnesses’ Canadian national director, said in an emailed response to questions. “Responsible parents make treatment decisions based on where they can get the best medical care in accord with the law and with the co-operation of their treating physicians.”

As for Ms. Ryder’s comments, her “accusations and innuendo … are devoid of any facts and are completely false,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Shewfelt said, the medical profession is becoming increasingly willing to abide by the Witnesses’ belief that a transfusion violates the Bible’s warning against consuming blood. In fact, a leading Toronto oncologist recently said that doctors can successfully abide by their wishes in many cases.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses are experiencing fewer and fewer problems in obtaining medical treatment that conforms to their Christian conscience,” Mr. Shewfelt said.

Another former Witness who was a paralegal for the church in the 1990s, though, largely confirmed Ms. Ryder’s account, saying he can recall at least four cases where the Witnesses moved sick children out of province or out of the country to circumvent an expected attempt by child welfare authorities to gain custody so a transfusion could be carried out.

“It doesn’t happen often but it has happened,” said Michael Saunders.

Barbara Anderson, an employee of the church’s world headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., in the 1990s, also said she was aware of organized attempts to move sick children from situations where they could have blood forced on them, though she believes it is much less likely to take place today.

As recently as 2005, a teenage British Columbia girl, Sarah Bahris, was taken to Ontario after a B.C. court ordered that doctors be allowed to transfuse her, though family members say they did so on their own.

The Witnesses ‘ stand against transfusions of whole blood, officially adopted in 1945, stems from various Bible verses that call for followers to “abstain from” or not “eat” blood, although the organization will now allow members to receive some individual blood components as a personal matter of conscience.

Disputes arise when parents refuse blood on behalf of children below the age of majority, such as in the recent case of the B.C. sextuplets. When doctors are unwilling to comply with the family’s wishes, they typically approach local child welfare authorities, who ask the courts for an order giving them temporary custody so they can ensure the transfusion is administered.

The situation rarely progress to that point in life-and-death cases of traumatic injury, when treatment has to be given immediately, said Mr. Saunders. Most of the Canadian cases have involved cancer patients, who can become dangerously anemic — sometimes requiring a transfusion — under the effects of chemotherapy.

Ms. Ryder, born into a Witnesses family, said she worked as an assistant to her former husband, Daniel Pole, another Witness and lawyer, who has handled a number of cases for Church members.

They eventually lived at Bethel, the church’s Canadian headquarters in Georgetown, north of Toronto, the woman said. She left the church when the couple divorced in 1996.

The Witnesses cases they worked on involved either blood-transfusion disputes or child-custody battles where a Jehovah’s Witnesses member and a non-member had divorced, she said.

In the New Brunswick transfusion incident, which unfolded in 1989, Ms. Ryder said she picked up the boy — who had leukemia — and his mother at their rural home and had them squat down low in the back seat to avoid detection by police who were searching for the boy. In Toronto, he was treated at the Hospital for Sick Children before being taken to Mexico, she said.

Ms. Ryder said she specifically recalled two other cases of children in Western Canada who were moved to Ontario with the church’s help and one in Newfoundland taken to Quebec. In many cases, the child would then be whisked to the United States or Mexico for treatment by doctors willing to forgo blood transfusions, she said.

When any Witness, child or adult, ends up in hospital, they are shadowed “24/7″ by members of the church’s “hospital liaison committee,” who offer support and prayer and encourage the patient to abide by the blood ban, said Ms. Ryder. Sometimes, if they catch wind of a possible forced transfusion, they will try to sneak the children out of the hospital, she charged.

For Juliet Guichon, a lawyer and bioethicist at the University of Calgary who follows the Witnesses closely, alleged incidents such as the one in New Brunswick raise questions that should probably be investigated by provincial authorities.

“If what [Ms. Ryder] says is true, then the Watchtower Society is deliberately attempting to evade the legitimate authority of the state to protect children,” said Ms. Guichon.

“The Watchtower Society is not a good protector of children. The state is a much better protector of children in need of medical care.”

Mr. Pole, however, said he is aware of no cases where child patients were spirited out of a province to avoid apprehension by child welfare, and had never been part of such activity himself.

“That’s news to me,” the Orangeville, Ont.-based lawyer said of his former wife’s allegations. “I’ve always represented people who wanted to go to court….

Anyone I’ve represented has a respect for the rule of law.”

Ms. Guichon cited Jehovah’s Witnesses publications, such as the Watchtower, that have advised parents to fight hard to hold up the blood ban, even in the face of legal action. One 1991 Watchtower article said Witnesses should try to obey secular laws but when those rules violate God’s word, “the divine law comes first,” even if authorities “might consider [the Witness] a lawbreaker.” A 1981 piece approvingly discusses a Danish couple who snatched their three-year-old son out of hospital to avoid a court-ordered transfusion.

When a Witnesses family does wind up in the courtroom, the result is an often-emotional conflict between religious faith and medicine. Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on one such case, concluding that children under 16 can sometimes determine their own medical treatment — even if it means refusing potentially life-saving blood — if a court deems them to be sufficiently mature.

David Day, a Newfoundland lawyer who represented the Witnesses at the high court, said he has been asked to handle 41 blood cases, and in all but seven or eight, felt the child had freely chosen to resist blood, without undue adult influence.

Ms. Ryder, however, said she is convinced the Supreme Court decision was wrong, at least with respect to Witnesses children. She said such young people are subject to years of indoctrination on the dire consequences of willingly accepting a transfusion — from excommunication to death on the day of Armageddon, when devout followers are supposed to be saved. Meanwhile, they are under constant scrutiny while receiving hospital treatment, she said.

“I would say the court needs to re-examine what actually happens when a child is put in this position,” said Ms. Ryder. “Is the child really exercising their free will, or are they just parroting something they heard?”

Article Source: The National Post

—

The year is 1983. Mr. K, a kindly Jehovah’s Witness man and his wife knock on the door of a typical middle-class, suburban home. He doesn’t know that his return visit is about to ask him not to return, that Mr. B has only been being polite in taking his Watchtower magazines and nothing more. But something else is about to happen. A seemingly small event will trigger a drastic shift that will change the lives of that family forever — even two yet-unborn children. It will be a change that will tear the family apart, cause desperation and inconsolable sorrow.

It was the day that changed everything…

Mr. B was closing the door, sighing inwardly with relief. He’d finally had the courage to ask the Jehovah’s Witnesses not to return again. The magazines he’d been accepting for the past several months had only ended in the kindling box for starting fires. He’d not been interested in their preaching but didn’t want to be rude; it wasn’t his style. In a way, he respected Mr. K, who came to his door week after week. If nothing else, he was persistent but that too had grown annoying. Mr. B had always been one to root for the underdog and, after all, Mr. K seemed so innocently happy — there on the porch with his wife — and even though he thought they were a bit crazy he’d not wanted to hurt their feelings. But now he was about to get his Saturday mornings back to himself, his wife and his young daughter. After today, the Jehovah’s Witnesses wouldn’t be interrupting them anymore with messages of Armageddon or gloom and doom.

But could he have imagined what was about to happen, as his little girl curiously squirmed her way into the door just before he could close it? Could he have known that this would give them literally the opening they needed? Could he have known that one day he would disown this beloved child and his yet unborn son because this man’s religion should tell him so? No, that would have been unthinkable to him, but that was all about to change. It would take years but he too would change — their lives would never be the same.

» Read the entire story at www.jwrecovery.org
The magazine for recovering Jehovah’s Witnesses

JWRecovery Magazine is a completely free, collaborative journal designed to provide easily accessible information and support assistance to ex Jehovah’s Witnesses around the world. It is our hope that the information contained within, in a new alternative format, will be another convenient touch-point for those seeking information and recovery help.

The editing staff and article contributors have come together on a non-profit basis, with no agenda other than to provide recovery assistance for other former Jehovah’s Witnesses. We are not an organized group nor professional counselors or therapists. Rather we aim to provide support to our fellows in an informal way by sharing stories, experiences and research.

For those of us who have come together to produce this magazine, it is our pleasure to finally release it to the public and we look forward to many others joining us to contribute to this journal in future issues.

Personally, it’s been a delight working with such knowledgeable, skilled and passionate people. We all share the vision of helping others and we hope that vision will continue to be realized as the ex-JW community raises its voices together. JWRecovery Magazine is now available online and for free download at www.jwrecovery.org

Issue #1 (Fall 2009) features articles, interviews and columns by many ex-JWs throughout the community including:

Barbara Anderson
Randy Watters
Don Cameron
Gary Busselman
Brenda Lee
Lance Goller
Brian Stilson
Amy Arnao
…and many more.

Please visit the site and let us know what you think. You can of course download the full, print-friendly PDF version as well as browse the website and comment on the articles and features.

If you have a website, we’d greatly appreciate it if you could help spread the word about the magazine by linking to www.jwrecovery.org

Thanks again for everyone who came together to make this project a reality! We’re already beginning work on the next issue which will be released in December.

So without any further ado,

JWRecovery Magazine
www.jwrecovery.org

Dushanbe, September 25, Interfax - Police in Khujand, northern Tajikistan, detained 17 followers of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are banned in this country, a source at the country’s Interior Ministry told Interfax on Friday.

“They were using the houses as a place of worship, which is banned by law,” he said.

Police also found in the house the organization’s literature, which the Interior Ministry believes contained “animosity towards other religious confessions,” he said.

“All the detained persons could face charges under Article 189 of the Tajikistan Penal Code,” the source said.

Article 189, “Inciting ethnic, racial, local or religious hatred,” provides for a punishment for a period between five to 12 years of imprisonment. Normally, this article is applied in Tajikistan against the followers of the Hizb ut-Tahrir religious party, which calls for the overthrow of all current governments in the Central Asian republics and the formation of Islamic Halifat.

This is the first such detention of Jehovah’s Witnesses since October 2007, when the country banned this organization which in certain countries is classified as a sect. The main reason for this ban was the Witnesses’ broad missionary activity, the authorities said.

—
Originally posted at: www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=6484

In 2009, while the world is celebrating Charles Darwin’s 200th birth anniversary, US scientists have a unique challenge: to convince 60% of their countrymen that God did not create man. It might seem odd that a country, which has won the maximum number of Nobel prizes, sent a man to the moon, and has the best universities in the world, takes the antediluvian creation myth in the book of Genesis literally.

A 2009 Gallup poll revealed that only 39% of Americans believed in evolution. There were two reasons for this: education and religion. Among the high school educated, only 21% believed in evolution and 52% had no opinion; among those with a college degree, 29% did not believe and 30% had no opinion. For the religious, Darwin contradicts the word of God and those who attended church regularly were found to not believe in evolution.

To analyse the role of religion in this debate, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life asked major religious groups in the US what they thought about evolution.

The study found that at the bottom of the chart were Jehovah’s Witnesses: Only 8% of their members believed in evolution. Slightly better were Mormons (22%), Evangelical Protestants (24%), historically black Protestants (38%) and Muslims (45%). Among the Catholics and Protestants, more than 50% believed in evolution.

A major problem facing the US is that religious groups, which deny evolution are out to impose their views as science on everyone by modifying science textbooks. In 2004, 150 years after Darwin published his seminal work, the Cobb County Board of Education in Atlanta affixed a sticker on thousands of public school textbooks, which stated that evolution is a theory, not a fact. In Dover, Pennsylvania, the school board decided to teach that an “intelligent agent” created various species.

The same Pew Research poll, which found that only 8% of Jehovah’s Witnesses believed in evolution also found that 81% of Buddhists believed in evolution along with 80% of Hindus. Like the story of creation in the Book of Genesis, Hindus too have creation myths, but in India, where most American-Hindus are from, these creation myths stay in religious books, not in school textbooks. Also, there are no Hindu or Buddhist groups questioning a fact, which has been debated, analysed and tested for 150 years.

While various American Christian groups are vehemently anti-evolution, it cannot be generalized that it is a common behaviour of all Abrahamic religions; since Jews as a group stand third in ranking—after Buddhists and Hindus—with 77% believing in evolution.

The Pew religious survey found one thing in common between American Hindus, Buddhists and Jews: Members of these religions lead the religious groups in terms of education and were most likely to have a postgraduate degree. This ties with the Gallup poll, which found that 74% of Americans who had a postgraduate degree believed in evolution.

This also explains the frenetic effort among religious groups to subvert the education system. There is one more difference. In India, the syllabus is decided by the government—both state and Central— whereas in the US, local school boards have the authority to decide tests, texts and teaching materials. Thus, depending on the religious beliefs of the school board members, insane ideas can be taught and science can be redefined. To prevent this, parents have to file lawsuits or vote the school board out—both disruptive activities.

Courts in the US have found that teaching “intelligent design”, a euphemism for creationism, violates the US constitution. The creationists now are fighting for academic rights, so that educators can teach “a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions”. Fortunately, this is a fight we don’t have in India.

—
Article republished from Livemint.com.  Full credits to: Jayakrishnan Nair