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our election system--the most critically important information. It's bad enough that our votes are tabulated by private companies using SECRET, PROPRIETARY software. But WHO is doing that secret tabulation is the real shocker.
In tracking the funders and owners of ES&S (which, together with Diebold, tabulates 80% of Americans' votes, both of them using "trade secret" software), the web site states the following:
"AIS (American Information Systems--ES&S's predecessor) was initially funded by Howard Ahmanson, Jr. <2>. Ahmanson is a member of the Council for National Policy, a 'steering group' linked to the Bush administration <3>,<4>,<5>,<6>,<7> and has holdings in ES&S. Ahmanson donates substantially to CalTech/MIT, and helps finance the Chalcedon Institute and the Discovery Institute which pushes Creationist science and education in California. Chalcedon is a fundamentalist Christian ministry devoted to 'nothing short of ... rebuilding the theological fortifications of Christian civilization ... eroded by the forces of humanism and secularism over the past three centuries', and is at the heart of Christian Reconstructionism, a 'recently articulated philosophy which argues that it is the moral obligation of Christians to recapture EVERY institution for Jesus Christ' and 'among other things "mandating the death penalty for homosexuals ...".' <8> and <9>"
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The MADNESS of the people who now control the tabulation of our votes strikes me particularly. For instance, how can someone "donate substantially to CalTech/MIT" and yet believe that "humanism" and "secularism" are the enemy? If it were not for "humanism" and "secularism," institutions like CalTech and MIT WOULD NOT EXIST. All their professors would have long ago been drawn and quartered, and died agonizing deaths by fire!
As for "recapturing every institution for Jesus Christ" and "mandating the death penalty for homosexuals ...", words fail me. It is so mind-bogglingly out of sync with what Jesus said and how he lived that MADNESS is not sufficient to describe it--twisted, sick, evil, diabolical madness!
I have always thought of Christianity--as it is described to me in the New Testament, by the words of Jesus, and the stories of his life--as a pure and innocent child. It is so sweet, so guileless, so simple and so perfect. All people are equal--whores, fishermen, priest, beggar, rich, poor--to a child's eyes. Love thine enemy. Give every material possession away. Be as the birds of the field. Enemies may rip you to shreds. Keep loving them. Love them even more. It is the only salvation.
And how I think of these "Christian" madmen--who would put homosexuals to death--and Bush and the Bush Cartel, who would cloak the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqis in the mantle of "Christianity"--is that they are like the torturers and murderers of a pure and innocent child, for whom suffering and death are not enough; they must also sully the mind of the child; they must make the child begin to love evil, before they rape it and torture it and kill it.
The Christian religion suffered over a thousand years of this madness at the hands of powermongering, greedy, evil-minded men--with "baptism by the sword," and inquisitions, and witch-burnings, and horrible, slaughtering "crusades," and, perhaps worst of all, with the cruel suppression of human thought and creativity--and it was only with the coming of "humanism" and "secularism" that the pure message of Jesus ("love, love, love"!) began to re-emerge and be understood. "Humanism" and "secularism" SAVED Christianity from the thoroughly rotten institution of the CHURCH. "Humanism" IS Christianity--it teaches kindness, tolerance, understanding, generosity and appreciation of both the suffering and the beauty of others.
And the key to it all was the ability to READ--and the production of books--both of which are HUMANISTIC endeavors. The Church DID NOT encourage reading; it positively discouraged it; books and Bibles were extremely rare throughout the Church's thousand year pogrom against human intelligence, and what few books there were, were written in Latin; the rulers used Latin as the language of exclusion and control. Don't believe revisionist historians who glorify the Church as "the light of learning." That is bunk. The "Dark Ages" were DARK, horrible, ignorant, miserable, lost times, in which most of humanity were illiterate slaves, as deliberate policy of the Church. A thousand years of it! Learning and general education were gradually reborn (they were common in the pagan Roman Empire) as a result of the influence of Islam (yup!) and of the cosmopolitan interests of the Italian city states of the 15th century. And the easy reproduction of books (Gutenberg's invention of movable type, in 1440) then moved the Enlightenment along at a rapid pace. (Note: East Asia had movable type long before that--I'm speaking only of Europe.)
Once ordinary people began to read the New Testament--what Jesus actually SAID--the grip of the evil men of the Church was broken, and this astounding thought that Jesus had introduced into the world, "love thine enemy," was reborn in the world as HUMANISM.
"Secularism" (which basically starts with Machiavelli and "The Prince"--that the interests of the state are DIFFERENT FROM the interests of the church) caught on, particularly in America, as the result of RELIGIOUS WARS in Europe: "Christian" slaughtering "Christian" over different concepts of "Christianity." The founders of the American republic were disgusted by these endless "Christian" wars and persecutions, and adopted the secularist principle of the absolute wall between church and state as the FOUNDATION of the new republic. It was articulated in the First Amendment (primarily because founders like Jefferson and Madison were concerned to make it VERY, VERY CLEAR), but it is also fundamental to the Constitution, which contains NOT ONE WORD about religious doctrine or institutions, which they considered to be COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the founding of this new and revolutionary state.
The revolution WAS the absence of a state-sponsored religion!
And the type of greedy, powermongering, evil-minded, bloody-minded men who oppressed European humanity for a thousand years, and who instigated slaughter and torture of one religious faction over another, ARE NOW TABULATING OUR VOTES and CONTROLLING OUR ELECTIONS with PROPRIETARY PROGRAMMING CODE that WE ARE NOT PERMITTED TO SEE!
It's the Latin Mass and the Latin Bible and the Church of Rome all over again!
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Boy, that web site got me going! Wow!
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