SECTION NINE
EMAIL PAGE THREE

sm
COLUMN 104, APRIL 1, 2004
(Copyright © 2004 The Blacklisted Journalist)

EMAIL FROM BEAR IN AUSTRALIA

1. BUSH CAN WIN WITH RIGGED VOTING MACHINES

Subject: Re: [AGALIST] COLUMN 103
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 10:21:29 +1000
From: Bear bear@thebear.org 
To: AGALIST-owner@yahoogroups.com 

Of course Bush can state with great finality that he cannot lose!

I would like to hope Kerry might win against Bush in November, but since the vote-taking is now done by computers with secret source code (no electoral board has source-code access, it is termed a 'trade secret'- thus the program can act like a virus, and can do anything with the inputs/votes without anyone the wiser).
Almost all electorates now use these voting machines, and have no paper ballots. All the several companies making the computerized vote taking machinery are owned by powerful Republicans. I doubt anyone can beat 
Bush, or any other Republican in a future election for major public office. Sorry to spoil your peace of mind, but that is reality. No re-counts ever again, nothing will be on paper to count the first time, either.

There are many misunderstandings in our society. One is that NOT voting is a 'right' under 'democracy' or it is merely exercising 'freedom of choice'. You should not be able to choose NOT to participate in the electoral process and still claim full citizenship privileges.

It is not a democracy if everyone does not vote. Only with a complete and proper canvas of the citizenry can
representative government said to be democratic. If only a group or subset of people otherwise eligible to vote do so, then it is not democracy, it is oligarchy (rule by an elite). If getting everyone to express their choice for representation requires compulsion of some kind, then so be it- after all, citizenship presently brings many
perks and privileges without imposing any requirements.

I think it reasonable- the only thing a citizen should properly be required to do (other than not to act treasonably) is to vote. All those who do not want to participate in the electoral process should  be termed 'residents', and denied the privileges of full citizenship, like a passport- and have reduced access to various services, etc.

Another massive common misunderstanding is to confuse advertising with free speech. Free speech is the fundamental right to speak one's mind on political matters. Advertising on the other hand, is focused, coercive behaviour, intended to induce people to buy things or act in a specified way, by any means. Even deception and misdirection may be used, and therefore it is quite reasonable that advertising be controlled and limited to protect people. One example of inappropriate advertising is the common-as-grass promotions for the various State Lottos. These ads always give the impression of easy wins, but never mention the odds, which are in the range of 5 to 50 million to one against you. Neither gambling of any kind nor drugs of any kind should be allowed to advertise.

Cheers,

Bear
http://www.thebear.org  ##

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2. JANET JACKSON'S TIT

Subject: Re: [AGALIST] COLUMN 103
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 11:18:11 +1000
From: Bear bear@thebear.org 
To: AGALIST-owner@yahoogroups.com 

Janet Jackson's tit only offends me due to it lacking a nice shape- being saggy- as well as having a truly ugly bit of cheap jewelry pinned to the nipple. You can see nicer looking tits on late night tv, or in almost any modern movie. Great act of promotion, you cannot find a better bit of free publicity, bet her stuff sells like hotcakes. And so far as Justin and his disingenuous little disclaimer, it sucks- any fool could tell the whole thing was
choreographed to the nit's eyebrow. Otherwise why would she have worn a bulky and obviously uncomfortable chunk of metal on her boob's sensitive nipple, well hidden under a leather outfit where no-one 
would see it?

Cheers,

Bear
http://www.thebear.org  ##

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3. CRUCIFIXION IN TRUE ROMAN STYLE

Subject: Re: [AGALIST] COLUMN 103
Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 11:05:44 +1000
From: Bear bear@thebear.org 
To: AGALIST-owner@yahoogroups.com 

Mel Gibson, now there's a piece of work. He spends millions of $ on making a movie with the stated goal of 'accurately portraying the crucifixion', and does not even take the most basic step of finding out how it really was done. The act of execution by fastening to a cross was invented by the Phoenicians of Carthage and adopted by the Romans, who were amongst the cruelest people in history, but even they refused to put Roman Citizens to death by this barbaric method, instead decreeing they be cast from a high cliff.

In crucifixion, only three nails were used. Two were used for fixing the arms, and were placed close to the wrist, between the bones of the forearm, so pressure was placed on a ganglion by the victim's weight. This caused such intense pain it paralyzed the diaphragm making it impossible to breathe. The third nail (actually
spikes in modern terminology) Was driven through the heel-bone or calcaneous into the side of the upright of the cross. Only by raising the body on this nail was it possible to breathe. Most died quickly, in a couple of hours.

Crucifixion was abandoned by the beginning of the Christian Era and by the middle ages the method totally forgotten. In the language of the Bible, no distinction between forearm and hand is made, so medieval painters of religious icons showed a piercing of the palm of the hand rather than the correct place, but in fact the palm
cannot sustain the weight of the body nor would it have caused such intense pain to assure a rapid demise by suffocation. Likewise they placed the other nail between the digits of the foot, which required an additional bit wood which was never used. In many medieval depictions the other condemned men are shown tied by ropes to the cross, which is just laughable- why would they have done that".

I also doubt that Gibson knows that the very comprehensive Roman records of the time do not mention either Jesus, Pontius Pilate or any of the many New Testament's so called 'events' of the era, including no record that Herod ever called a 'census' at any time during his reign.

The Christian Myth was created at the council of Nicea in 328 AD, at the specific direction of the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine. 7000 documents purporting to represent writings of the various Christian sects were destroyed without a trace, 27 were chosen, and three of these. the 'synoptic gospels' are acknowledged to be re-writes of a single document called 'Q'. There were a handful of documents which did survive in part and a very few intact-these are collected in what is known as The Apocryphal New Testament, a book so 
rare and difficult to find that I count myself as very lucky to have known someone when I was 15 who let me read a copy of it. No Christian documents of any kind predate the middle of the second century. A single, cryptic reference to the Christian sect found in some translations of Josephus, 'History of The Jewish War' is
accepted by most scholars to be a later forgery .

This whole gruesome fiasco reminds me of the usual Hollywood-style knights in armor movies, where they have the jousting combatants on the right side of the lists. This never was done, for the simple reason that a lance had to be perfectly straight and aligned with the path of motion when it connected with the shield or it broke in two. The lance was always held in the right hand, the shield in the left, and thus the combatants were forced to passed to each other's right, which translates to the left side of the list. A skilled jouster would lean out over the railing of the list so as to place his lance in perfect alignment with his opponent's shield and
thus dishorse him without damage to the lance. Traffic on the roads in the Age of Chivalry always moved to the left, as is the case in England and her many (colonial) commonwealth countries today. When republicanism rose in America and Europe, one way the revolutionaries took separating from the former aristocratic rule book was to adopt the universal rules of traffic at sea and drive on the right side of the road.

Cheers,

Bear
http://www.thebear.org  ##

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