askandanswer

Sometimes the boundary between the points of when a person should be interested in the operation of the justice system and when they need not be interested, is difficult to discern. However, as a general rule, I see some benefits to the broader society if people maintain a degree of interest in how and how well justice is administered.

There are almost no certainties in life, no matter how obvious things might appear, so at times I am inclined to use cautious, non-judgemental language.

Thanks for this, this is a helpful and interesting read. This has partly become my business. The first counsellor in the District Presidency asked me to attend court the day after the person was arrested. I did this, and there were several phone calls between myself and the Branch President on the morning of the hearing as I kept him updated. Since then I have visited the person in prison four times, twice with the EQP and once with the Branch President. The Branch President and I have made several attempts to find emergency accommodation for this person in the hope that if he had a place to stay the judge would be more likely to release him on bail.

While I'm quite confident that the person has engaged in behaviour inconsistent with the law I'm also quite confident that the police have "overcharged" this person. That is a fairly common practice in this jurisdiction, particularly when it comes to Aborigines. Its my belief that the missionary could provide evidence that, while not clearing the person of all charges, would certainly cast significant doubt on some of the additional charges thereby leading to a reduce sentence. In this context, the current Branch President has been well aware of the situation, he accompanied me to the prison a few days ago where the accused is currently being held on remand. Both the Branch President and I have been keeping the first counsellor in the District Presidency well informed. The first counsellor was the Branch President at the time the incident occurred. He has completed a law degree but does not practice as a lawyer. The Branch President in the neighbouring Branch where the missionary has now been assigned, is a full-time senior missionary so he is well aware of the matter and it has been discussed with him on some occasions. I don't know if he has informed the Mission President, who is a former Area Seventy, but I would be surprised if he has not.

There might be a member who, later this week, might be asked to plead guilty or not-guilty to a set of charges that resulted initially from a minor domestic violence incident but which were added to because of the nature of the interaction between him and a number of police officers who showed up in response to the initial call. If this person pleaded guilty he could end up spending a year or more in jail. This person’s legal representation might come from a non-government, community based organisation whose level of funding is far less than the completely inadequate funding provided to government Legal Aid organisations. In this country, there is no right to legal representation. If you can’t afford a lawyer, and if you don’t fall under the remit of one of the government or non-government organizations that attempt to provide legal representation, you’re on your own, although in practice, that doesn’t happen very often. There may have been a missionary, and perhaps even his companion, who witnessed this interaction between the member and the police. It is possible that this missionary could give evidence that could be different, in several key aspects, to the narrative of the numerous police officers who might be the only other source of information on this matter. There could be a strong reluctance from church leaders to have missionaries involved in this matter in any way. The police have not sought a statement from him/them. The lawyer who may end up handling the matter on behalf of the accused is not aware that there are one or two missionaries who might have witnessed much of the actions upon which the charges are based and whose testimony could influence either the verdict or the sentence. It may be the case that the church has had to choose between, on the one hand, maintaining its practice of preventing missionaries from serving as witnesses in criminal trials and concealing, or not making available, important evidence that could result in an impoverished person with a clean criminal record receiving a sentence that would be harsher than it might otherwise have been, or on the other hand, allowing the missionary to testify, thereby serving the interests of justice and reducing the severity of the sentence that is likely to be given, and that the church has chosen to protect the missionary to the detriment of the accused. My question is what is the moral and ethical thing to do in this situation. Should I let the lawyer know that there might be one, possibly two witnesses who could provide evidence that may run counter to the police narrative, or should I follow the church line and say nothing to anybody about the missionaries? And if I say nothing, would I then be complicit in what could be labelled a conspiracy of silence aimed at influencing the course of justice in a manner that is likely to adversely impact on a poor and highly vulnerable person? My inclination at present is to follow my Priesthood leaders and keep quiet about the missionaries. How might you handle such a matter?

More likely an Australian passport

From a purely logical viewpoint, my priorities, in this order, would be My own testimony My spouse/s testimony The testimony of my active, believing children The thoughts, beliefs and actions of my opposing children. I would be hesitant about engaging in actions for the benefit of a lower priority in circumstances when that might endanger a higher priority.

This is what's happening in Eden: One feature of our retail grocery sector is that it's dominated by two large chains, Coles and Woolworths, who between them, control about 70% of the market. Aldi showed up about 25 years ago and they have about 20% although their range of producers is much more limited. And then you have the IGA - Independent Grocers Association of Australia with about 10% or less. A few weeks ago, the media was full of stories about a recently announced plan by the federal government to review the operations of our supermarket sector. Farmers have been trying to figure out why there is such a huge difference between what the supermarkers offer them for their produce, and how much customers are then being charged by the supermarket. The Albanese government is finalising plans to launch the first full-scale price-setting review of Australian supermarkets in almost two decades, conducted by the consumer watchdog with compulsory information-gathering powers and backed by ministerial decree. I don't think anyone is holding out any real hope that a government inquiry will result in lower prices. The government doesn't have much ability to influence prices. Assistant Minister for Competition Andrew Leigh tells The Saturday Paper “Duopolies can do one of two things: they can squeeze the consumers or squeeze their suppliers. And I think a read of the economic consensus over the last 20 years would have been that there was more squeeze being placed on suppliers than consumers,” Leigh says. “But right now the anger seems to be quite hot in both directions: a concern from farmers that they’re not getting as much for their produce as they feel is fair and concerns from consumers that they’re paying more than they should.

In another thread it was suggested that there might be some problems in the church. Maybe there are, maybe there aren't, I don't know. But what I do know is that if there are problems in the church they're not my problems, they're God's problems, because its His church, and its for Him to solve them, not me. I just need to keep doing what I've always been doing, but do it more and better because I still see the occasional hint of an imperfection in myself (an almost imperceptible hint ). I feel no need to get engaged or involved in whatever problems there might be. They're not my problems.

Delete

The Stake President's actions here are entirely consistent with one of my all-time favourite talks, given by President Benson at BYU in 1980 when he was President of the Quorum of the Twelve. https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/ezra-taft-benson/fourteen-fundamentals-following-prophet/ Here is part of that talk: Second:The living prophet is more vital to us than the standard works. President Wilford Woodruff tells of an interesting incident that occurred in the days of the Prophet Joseph Smith: I will refer to a certain meeting I attended in the town of Kirtland in my early days. At that meeting some remarks were made that have been made here today, with regard to the living oracles and with regard to the written word of God. The same principle was presented, although not as extensively as it has been here, when a leading man in the Church got up and talked upon the subject, and said: “You have got the word of God before you here in the Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants; you have the written word of God, and you who give revelations should give revelations according to those books, as what is written in those books is the word of God. We should confine ourselves to them.” When he concluded, Brother Joseph turned to Brother Brigham Young and said, “Brother Brigham, I want you to take the stand and tell us your views with regard to the living oracles and the written word of God.” Brother Brigham took the stand, and he took the Bible, and laid it down; and he took the Book of Mormon, and laid it down; and he took the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and laid it down before him, and he said: “There is the written word of God to us, concerning the work of God from the beginning of the world, almost, to our day. And now,” said he, “when compared with the living oracles those books are nothing to me; those books do not convey the word of God direct to us now, as do the words of a Prophet or a man bearing the Holy Priesthood in our day and generation. I would rather have the living oracles than all the writing in the books.” That was the course he pursued. When he was through, Brother Joseph said to the congregation: “Brother Brigham has told you the word of the Lord, and he has told you the truth.” [In Conference Report, October 1897, pp. 18–19] It always surprises me that people are more willing to give heed to the words of prophets from thousands of years ago in totally foreign cultures, than they are to the words of prophets living here and now.

Well I think the latest data from the James Webb telescope is that every 487 years, on Thursdays, there is a brief moment of transubstantiation when the moon actually turns into cheese, although the coloUr is still a bit uncertain. And interestingly, the person who made this discovery, actually was a wife in her early 60's.

I've posted before something along the lines that if the prophet says the moon is blue on Tuesday, but to me it looks green, then it is obviously blue no matter what I see. And if on Wednesday the prophet says the moon is orange and it has always been orange but to me it still looks green, then that one goes in the too hard for now basket and I need to start thinking about getting my eyes checked. Almost any other attitude creates risks.

Says the guy whose icon features a crocodile with a wide open mouth full of teeth

I remained active in the church because in my mid teens I prayed for and received a spiritual assurance that the church was true. I like to think that it would take a similar experience for me to leave the church - not a change in teaching or doctrine or leadership or communications directors - but a spiritual experience, as clear and as reliable as the experience that first led me to continue coming to church. Anything less would be open to questioning and doubt.

Well if its any comfort to you Zil2 I think your'e twice the person that Zil was. But then again, maybe its just the Spirit?

I think its important and helpful to have the kind of faith whereby you can say, after an appropriate degree of analysis, that I don't understand this particular issue, so I'm going to put it in the too hard basket for now, and move onwards, unperturbed, with an undivided focus on the final destination and the things that matter most.

Just a clarification. You mentioned that "there are very few doctrinal paper that I wouldn't trust" but my guess is that you meant to say there are very few doctrinal paper that you would trust. Is that what you meant to say?

Hello @Maytoday welcome to the forum. We could do with a few more non Latter-Day Saints here, its good to have a diversity of opinions. I'm not sure what you mean by proven to be true, and I suspect that what constitutes proof will vary widely. Every day in courts of law across the world judges and jurors will listen to exactly the same evidence/information and come to different conclusions as to whether a particular fact has or has not been proven. For me, the only things that have been proven and that I can know for sure are my own existence and those things which have been confirmed personally and directly to me by the Holy Ghost. Everything else, absolutely everything else, including the theories of gravity and relativity and the idea that the sky often appears to be blue during the daytime when there are no clouds around, is usually a good working hypothesis but definitely not something I or anybody else knows.

I suspect that my first day, and your first day, and your son's first day were all the same day 3 And I, God, said: Let there be alight; and there was light. 4 And I, God, saw the light; and that light was agood. And I, God, divided the blight from the darkness. 5 And I, God, called the light Day; and the darkness, I called Night; and this I did by the aword of my power, and it was done as I bspake; and the evening and the morning were the first cday.

This seems to have some similarities with 1 Nephi 8. It might be worth re-reading that chapter and then pondering on if/how it might aid in interpreting/understanding your dream.

Like @Carborendum, I have no social media accounts apart from here at thirdhour and this site is where I make my largest digital footprint. I find it odd that you are asking us to form an opinion on the basis of half a dozen media posts made over a period of two or three years, the most recent of which was more than 6 years ago. Surely a well-informed opinion would be based on an objective and even-handed analysis of all of his social media posts. Even that would be a totally inadequate basis on which to form a reliable opinion as it would only cover one aspect of his life.

Like you, I was surprised to note that he worked for Phillip Morris. I guess that if there is any truth in the idea of karma, we would have to balance his work at Phillip Morris against his employment as the Managing Director of Public Affairs for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. Government development assistance agency, where he worked within both Republican and Democratic administration leadership to administer $7 billion in poverty reduction grants in 40 partner countries. Maybe his contribution to ending lives is less than his contribution to saving lives. Who knows?

To modify a saying in the legal profession = there is no such thing as a natural disaster, there are only new investment opportunities. This looks like the ideal time to invest in crop companies that operate outside the infected areas.

What a disaster! Its so sad that it takes years of work, high personal risk and lots of dollars to overcome injustice. Here in Australia. we're developing a good history of class actions being effectively used by large combinations of little people to successfully hold large and powerful organisations to account. The scary thing is that in the early/middle parts of last year, a number of politicians began talking about the evils of class actions and how there needed to be new legislation controlling/limiting the conditions under which a class action could be run. I haven't heard much more since then, but I find it worrying that politicians who are supposed to be the people's representatives have been talking about finding ways to limit one of the very few means that people have to have their voices effectively heard and to lessen the power imbalance.