WordWolf

It really wouldn't take a lot of work to look up even the "top few" like DWBH and apologize. It really wouldn't take a lot of work to write up a webpage and apologize in general for having been a real lcm to people, and you wouldn't even have to name the names of the people you REMEMBER hurting. Even a minimal effort would say something- it would say you cared, at least a little. With NO effort, that says something else- that you don't care, not even a little. Often, silence is a considerable message all by itself.

If he was "in a prison", it was a gilded prison ENTIRELY OF HIS OWN MAKING. He had no qualms against deceiving whoever he had to, in order to make his dream real. He had no qualms against using people as merchandise, in order to fulfill his lusts. If he failed to match his own press, it's his own fault for billing HIMSELF as Superman and Green Lantern rolled into one. And carefully designed that way by him. Ok, I can see where people should have done a LOT better at THAT part. That he was a liar and deceiver is worth a little outrage. That he used people as things is worth a little outrage. When there were people who showed signs of standing up to him, vpw had them kicked out and their reputations savaged so no one would listen to them. (This was before the internet.) vpw KNEW he was conning people, and carefully selected WHO HE COULD CON. When there were people with big families in twi, generally he left them alone. He avoided raping and molesting women who already had big support networks of people who would believe him. A) I share zero blame in shaping him into anything- partly because he worked hard to shape himself. and partly because he was dead months before I ever heard of him. B) We were all deceived, but not all of us were deceived the same way and to the same degree. I do not say that even MOST of us "lapped it up" and I certainly don't know most of us "denigrated" outsiders, or offered financial support. I did neither. I thought we were better, but I wasn't above learning from other Christians in an attempt to reach a higher plateau. MANY people fell for it. MANY people were HAPPY to fall for it. SOME insist on falling for it to this day. I try not to pigeonhole EVERYONE or MOST based on that.

One thing you're discounting, Bol, is that a lot of us were perfectly sincere Christians who meant well all along, wanted to learn about God, and wanted to please God. We weren't particularly interested in climbing any ladders or lying to anyone. We were scammed into thinking it was ALL of God- or the parts we wouldn't have fallen for were HIDDEN from us (like all the "lockbox' stuff.) We didn't intent to be victim, deceiver, liar, ladder-climber, set snares, or uise claims to get anything from anyone else. Perhaps you don't see it, but nearly every poster here who ever joined twi of their own free will MEANT WELL at the time we joined. Oh, almost all of us have learned since that there was scams and traps, and many of us left over them, or were kicked out due to them, but until that happened, most of us made good-faith efforts to do the RIGHT thing, what we thought God wanted, not just what WE wanted.

Actually, you wouldn't agree, because you'd just seek another pretext to validate the conclusions you already made. "Lots of stuff I teach is not original" was buried hundreds of pages into a book that had a number of people claiming twi and vpw had special information re: God that others did not. You're continuing to ignore that people who tell the truth tell the same truth, but people who lie tell DIFFERENT lies to DIFFERENT people. So, when he was trying to appear humble, he claimed he wasn't original. When he was trying to put forth he was THE Authority, then he had a connection that was unique in all of 2000 years. If you have a connection unique in all of 2000 years, then you're claiming that you AND YOU ALONE have the special connection. This is not difficult to see unless one is determined to make it difficult. (None so blind...) As almost everyone else can easily see, the words "YOU" coupled with "AS IT HAS NOT BEEN KNOWN SINCE THE FIRST CENTURY" mean that it IS "ONLY YOU" for the last 2000 years. That obviously vpw wasn't the only person who knew things since the last 2000 years- and that some of it was the OPPOSITE of the first century church should make it obvious that the claim of the supposed promise of God was WRONG. Therefore, either: 1) vpw lied, or 2) God lied, or 3) Someone claimed to be God, lied to vpw, and he wasn't competent enough to tell he was getting information from a lying spirit. If vpw lied, I don't trust him. If vpw heard from a lying god, I don't want anything to do with his god, and I'd get a God who can't lie. If vpw was getting his information from lying spirits, I don't want his information either. I know, you can't see it's that simple. Despite your inability, it IS that simple.

If I had one handy, do you think I would have re-used a previous one?

I agree. Anyone who wants to take the turn, can begin posting quotes. (Preferably a lurker who hasn't been posting recently.)

Actually, for dishonesty at its lowest, I can't top taking the work of someone else, then turning around, claiming credit for it, the result of your life's work, and claim that God Almighty taught it to you, and ONLY you, for the past 2000 years.

Most of us should at least know 365.25 days in a year, since we all know we have to add a calendar day every 4 years.

All we know is "the item has ended."

Those of you who may have considered sticking around LiveJournal with the new ownership should seriously consider planning your exit. The management company doesn't understand the users, doesn't want to understand the users, and if the users in any way want to express displeasure with any decisions (made without any dialogue WITH the users), they don't want to hear from it and are already labelling the users as subversive or worse. Here, follow for yourself. It's a little tricky, because the new owners are Russian and the speech was in Russian, but a competent translation is included.... http://darkrosetiger.livejournal.com/373663.html Longtime users are already planning switches to different journal sites.

Sadly, deception and lies are still with us, and technology hasn't removed that. Technology also hasn't CAUSED that- it's not a GADGET or a SCIENCE problem- it's a SOCIAL problem. I'm sorry your friend was burned. I've been burned before and it sucks. (Then again, I've also been not-burned, which is great.) One warning, of course, was the phrase "whirlwind." Consumer groups warn against any purchase (a financial committment) where it's based on a RUSH, or when the salesperson is stressing a "hurry." Your friend needed to exercise caution, and then more caution. So would anyone reading this who's considering meeting someone, regardless of medium. You can meet someone wonderful. Or someone awful. Or anything in-between.

It's not all you CAN say, but it is all you WILL say. This is STILL neither a jury nor a court of law. None of us have confused it for that, nor think the rules are the same for discussion and court- except you. OUTSIDE the court of law, it is not practical to follow the rules of the law. That's why we're under no requirement to do so. (Except in your imagination.) And your premise has been refuted, repeatedly, by people who actually KNOW the law, who WORK with the law, who TEACH the law. However, you, the layman who has never STUDIED the law, have concluded you understand the law better than professors of law, etc.

If one limits oneself to only what's written in Scripture, it's obvious this is WRONG on several counts. "No church politics." Gee, that discounts Peter chiding the Law-mongers who wanted Judaism continued, complete with the yoke of the Law that was too heavy for them or their ancestors to bear. No "underhanded machinations." Gee, that discounts Alexander the coopersmith. No "divisions." HA! No "denominations". Gee, that discounts the "Paul-Apollos-Cephas-Christ" people, of whom the last set were the craziest. Divisions and pettiness didn't enter at any point because there would have to have been a time it wasn't around SOMEWHERE. Maybe the day of Pentecost ITSELF, but after that....

That's it.

It seems like you're going somewhere with this- that you're looking for a SPECIFIC answer. How about letting the rest of us know what's on your mind?

Having spent some time looking at what lcm and vpw both said, and what others have said about them, I HAVE concluded that's one diffrerence between vpw and lcm. vpw set up his organization, and was fully aware that at points he was deceiving people- saying he got special revelation, taking credit for the work of others, and that some of it was outright deception. He had goals he wanted to accomplish, and had no hesitation about deceiving people whenever it suited those goals. lcm arrived right out of college, never having had time working a secular job or getting experience "in the real world" outside school. vpw snowed lcm completely. vpw covered his own tracks with skill because he KNEW what he was doing was wrong. lcm was twisted into vpw's image, and thought he really wasn't doing wrong when he was doing wrong. So, he didn't cover his tracks so much- he saw nothing wrong, and nothing to cover. That's one reason he was CAUGHT. So, yes, on one level, lcm was a victim. However, what he did with his indoctrination was his own decision. When he got the big chair, he could have travelled around and dealt with people on a personal basis for a while, getting a sense of what the members were like AROUND THE COUNTRY. Instead, he insulated himself more and more. He also faced the realization he was not ready for the job he was assigned to, by demanding oaths of loyalty from people and pulling the strings tighter. So, he was victimized at one level, but he turned around and victimized others. There's many things he could have done instead.

When trying to figure out who was a victim of who, the first question, I think, is "How were they victimized?" If the statement begins "We were scammed and tricked by Corps", then we follow it back. If we were scammed and tricked by Corps, did they know it was a scam and a trick? If not (almost all were NOT and at least TRIED to do the right thing), then THEY were scammed and tricked. So, who scammed and tricked the Corps? The next step back is to VPW. So, when he scammed and tricked the Corps, did HE know it was a scam and a trick? If not, then we have to keep following it back. SOMEONE knew it was a scam, and SOMEONE thought up the scam. In the case of VPW, he took Leonard's class, and taught it to others, telling them it was HIS class and not mentioning Leonard to them. He took Stiles' book and retyped it, telling people it was HIS book and not mentioning Stiles to THEM. VPW sought out the hippies at the end of the 60s, and told them that God spoke to him over 20 years before, and that he had special knowledge other Christians lacked. As proof, he displayed knowledge, like the contents of Leonard's class and Stiles' book. While getting all his material from other Christians, he kept saying other Christians lacked answers. Meanwhile, there's no indication that people like Leonard were anything BUT trustworthy, and trusting others because THEY could be trusted. So, the top level of scam is where vpw was. He knew when he was making things up and claiming it was God Almighty talking to them.

Next song. "I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow I met one man who was wounded in love I met another man who was wounded with hatred"

So, who's turn is it?

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20020617.html ALLEN IVERSON AND THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE By SHERRY F. COLB Monday, Jun. 17, 2002 On Thursday, July 11th, Allen Iverson--the Philadelphia 76ers' All-Star Guard and NBA most valuable player for the 2000-01 season--was charged with three felonies and assorted misdemeanors. Prosecutors say he threw his wife of eleven months, Tawana Iverson, out of their house, naked, and subsequently threatened several men with a gun in his efforts to locate her. One of the men gave an account of what happened in a 911 call in which he suggested that this was the third time Iverson had thrown his wife out of their home. In response to the charges, Larry Brown and Billy King, the Sixers' coach and general manager, say they firmly support Iverson, reportedly emphasizing that he should be "presumed innocent" unless he is proven guilty. Such statements, though quite common, misconstrue the role of the presumption of innocence in a criminal case and feed the mistaken belief--shared by many--that the Constitution requires everyone in the United States to presume that an accused criminal is actually innocent until a jury finds otherwise. "Innocent Until Proven Guilty": Literal Truth? Recall another celebrity athlete who stood accused of spousal violence. During the year-long circus that was the O.J. Simpson trial, I encountered two odd claims by non-lawyers (and some misguided attorneys) with whom I was acquainted. The first claim was that Simpson actually was innocent, and would continue to be innocent, unless and until a jury brought in a guilty verdict against him. For all but those who take the radical (one might even say preposterous) view that the truth of an event from the past magically changes when the jury reaches a verdict, the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" cannot be taken as an accurate, literal description of reality. O.J. Simpson either did or did not kill Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, and nothing that a jury says later can factually alter that historical truth. No Command for Non-jurors to Suspend Judgment A second remark I encountered during the year that Marcia Clark and Johnny Cochran became household names, was that we all must suspend judgment about O.J.'s guilt until the jury reaches a verdict, with the implicit correlative that an acquittal requires all people to believe that O.J. was innocent. Neither of these positions has any foundation in law or logic. An audience watching a television show like The Practice or Law and Order must await the end of the program to find out what "really" happened. That is because the shows are fictional, and what most viewers want to know is whether--in the script--the accused is guilty or not. Because the truth lives only in the imagination of the show's creators, it is appropriate for the audience to delay all conclusions until the end, relegating suspicions and beliefs to the status of guesswork until the dramatic, and often unexpected, denouement. The Presumption of Innocence in a Criminal Trial What then is the appropriate role for the presumption of innocence? In a criminal trial, the presumption of innocence is an important constitutional protection for the accused. It means that the jury may only pronounce the defendant guilty if the physical and testimonial evidence presented prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Put differently, the jury must say "not guilty" even when it believes the defendant is guilty and often, it follows, even when the defendant in fact is guilty. Until the evidentiary threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is reached, the judge and the Constitution order the jury to acquit. The reason for this rule is that a guilty verdict subjects a person to incarceration, the deprivation of freedom that we all cherish and that is guaranteed us under normal circumstances. Though the acquittal of a factually guilty man is unfortunate and costly, it is an inevitable byproduct of a system designed to reduce to close to zero the odds that a factually innocent person will be convicted of a crime. None of this, however, has anything to do with what the rest of us--the people of the United States who are not serving on a particular criminal defendant's jury--are obligated to think or say. In the case of Allen Iverson, for example, the man who called 911 to report being threatened at gunpoint is under no obligation to presume Iverson's innocence. Indeed, if he takes the witness stand at trial and falsely recants his story as a favor to a friend (or as a loyal basketball fan), he will be guilty of perjury. How to Interpret Inconsistent Verdicts When O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder and subsequently held liable for wrongful death in a civil trial, some people wondered what they were supposed to think. For those who would treat the jury as a font of truth, it was possible to reconcile the verdicts--the evidence might have proved that Simpson probably killed Brown and Goldman, but it was not quite strong enough to eliminate all reasonable doubt. Significantly, however, we need not view the verdicts in that deferential, crabbed way. It is possible and even reasonable to reach other conclusions. One might conclude either that (a) the criminal jury erred in reaching its verdict; (b) the criminal jury disregarded the judge's instructions to find the defendant guilty if the evidence supported that verdict beyond a reasonable doubt; or © the criminal jury correctly reacted to the evidence admitted at trial, but other evidence that failed to make its way in--including, but not limited to, Simpson's flight from the police, threats of suicide, claims that he loved Nicole "too much," and the prophetic entries in Nicole's own diary--fill the gap between what the jury heard and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Notably, in the civil trial, Simpson was forced to testify and had no recourse to the Fifth Amendment, as he had in his criminal trial. That too could account for the divergence in verdicts. So could the fact that a photo of Simpson in the Bruno Magli shoes he had denied wearing was available at the civil, but not yet at the criminal, trial. The Right to Think and Speak Logically, Outside the Jury Room However one views the Simpson and Iverson cases, the Constitution does not dictate what we ought to think or say. Indeed, it protects those thoughts and statements, regardless of their content or viewpoint, under the First Amendment. We therefore need not limit ourselves in the ways the jury is limited--in terms of either the evidence we are allowed to consider, the threshold that evidence must meet before we draw a conclusion, or even our own default presumption. You can presume that Allan Iverson is guilty as charged, in other words, subject to rebuttal by proof that emerges in the next several months. You can do that, based on logic and the evidence you already know about, along with the fact that thankfully, a relatively small proportion of people charged with crimes are factually innocent. What you cannot do, consistent with the Constitution, is bring your logical presumption of guilt, your willingness to infer guilt on the basis of inadmissible evidence (such as Iverson's prior bad acts), or your readiness to "convict without a trial" into a jury room. In that room, where twelve people hold the power to deprive a person of her fundamental freedom from physical confinement, the law and the judge's instructions rightly govern our thought processes. Sherry F. Colb, a FindLaw columnist, is a Professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark and teaches courses in criminal procedure and evidence.

Man, if I was a REAL attorney, I'd wish my opponents had cases this weak..... "Everyone charged with a penal offence" There is NO COURTROOM HERE. No one has been CHARGED in a courtroom. We're not bound by the rules of the court- nor are the rules of the court bound by rules of discussion. Rape is an offense in a legal sense, but it exists in discussions outside of courtrooms, too. In fact, we've been discussing it outside of courtrooms for many pages, now. Surprise, surprise! "NO TRIAL HAS OCCURRED?" Who said a trial HAD occurred? You're the only one comparing this discussion with any kind of "court" in the first place. So, let's see... Can't defend his position from a Biblical point of view (II Corinthians 13:1b "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established."), Can't defend his position from a legal point of view (the rules of court do not apply to discussion outside of court), is now resorting to misinterpreting parts of sentences from UN documents he normally spurns..... You know, some people by now would have admitted they had an indefensible position. Life continues past admitting that.

Yes, but last time, an ADDITIONAL quote was said to be the "giveaway", and the round went too fast. I figured you'd have forgotten by now, especially if I left the "giveway" out.

"He hates but one man: the man who stole his shoes." "That's because there is no air in the windmills of your mind." "He swallowed a live hand grenade. He has no internal organs." "What's your favorite ice cream flavor?" "Buffalo Ripple."