MASS CENSORSHIP IN AOL
IMPORTANT NOTICE
Attention all who support freedom of information
!!!WARNING OF MASS CENSORSHIP BY AOL!!!
Hi there,
The following posting on love shack message board was removed by UKhostACE along with more than 50 others posted over the previous month. Most of them concerned or were posted by a third world immigrant whose ideas were thought highly controversial in the Shack. They were removed in a single day without notification or individual explanation.
This posting in no way contradicts the COS rules. It is a highly relevant conclusion to a month long discussion about social change and is in no way offensive. The writer was also blocked by AOL staff from reading postings made by another member.
A fellow defender of free speech urges you to read the posting and make your own conclusions as to why it was completely censored. It is presented exactly as posted. As members of the global net community I feel it vital that we uphold fairness and freedom in our fledgling cyberspace.
DO YOU THINK IT WAS RIGHT TO CENSOR THIS MESSAGE?
Subject: Re: So many dolts so little time
From: boyskisurfer@aol.com (BoySkiSurfer)
Date: 03 Oct 1999 18:37:41 EDT
In the middle of all this JoSS aggro, DOC has written one of the finest postings I have read..
>
>If you look at the last 4-5 decades you will see that a lot has been
>achieved, but at what cost? the aged are no longer respected, things have no
>value to people, people have no values.
>I look around at people today and i see a very insular world, and the sad thing is that >this is going to continue, the gap between the have and the
>have nots is getting larger, "keeping up with the Jones" is more rife that
>ever before, and for what? progress?
>I am not saying i am better than or different to anyone else, but i try to
>have consideration for those who faught in 2 world wars, and for those who
>have changed things in the past so as to make things better for our
>generation.
>Boy when "my gerenration" were the ones who were trying to change the world,
>i thought that no one understood why i was doing it or what i was trying to
>achieve, now that i have aged a little more i have come to realise that
>sometimes moderation is the key to it all, there are people who WILL NOT
>change the way they think or do things, there are those who will look at the
>suggestion and weigh up all the pros and cons, and there are those who will
>want to change everything tomorrow, Boy you are the latter, no disrespect
>there, the next few generations on are the ones who will look at things and
>weigh them up, and the older generation are the ones who like things to
>remain how they have always been.
>This world is big enough for all of us to live in and respect each others
>wishes, we can all get along, but to do so we have to learn how to understand
>each other.
>I don't wish to sound patronising by this note, but we all have differing
>views, why can we not discuss them without getting into personal insults
>again?
>
This is top class stuff here Doc.....I must agree that I am one of those who wants to see change sooner rather than later.....and I know I am fighting those who either want no change at all or who want to see it all gradually happen over the next few generations (i think Venus wrote that somewhere)......that sums up the whole struggle now being dramatised on these boards in front of us...
But I don't think these groupings are just governed by age.....many younger people fit into the no-change bracket and quite a few older people like me are very anxious for social change now.......
Here are our reasons for wanting change now......for the first time in human history it seems that the human race is actually running out of time......it's not that the planet is about to end....that's millions of years away.....but the environment and ecology needed to sustain all carbon based life is under severe threat at present.....global warming is not just a scare story.....it's really happening... check out the ice berg moving now across the South Atlantic.... ozone depletion, rain forest destruction, air pollution, food shortages, over population, etc etc.......at the present rate of deterioration we will face severe difficulties in less than 50 years.....there is a great likelihood of massive movements of refugees from environmental disasters at that time.......places like Bangladesh, Benelux, parts of Brazil etc will simply disappear under the rising sea whilst South Africa, Canada, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia will become uninhabitable through radiation hazard (spreading ozone hole)......hence we need to organise ourselves now in preparation for that because there seems no way of stopping it.....in my own village all the surrounding trees have been logged by western companies..... that means no soil is left to grow crops because the trees were needed to keep it in place...the rivers wash everything away now...the rate of environmental destruction is not as visible in your towns as it is in the third world....but it's happening everywhere.....you've got problems with air.....cities are becoming choked on petrol fumes....then there's inverse trapping of chemicals from production plants and radio hazards from ever growing electrical fields etc etc etc......
More than that.....the pace of techno revolution (as Itsclosingtime mentioned) is so great that the whole of society is being transformed into a new age.....that may not sound too heavy but the side effects are beyond belief.....we can see them all around us as our communities are transformed.... you say yourself about the growing trend towards selfishness etc....well that's all part of the biggest social revolution certainly since the Industrial Rev. and probably since the Neolithic Rev......we are changing now whether we like it or not.... traditional family life is a thing of the past.......check out all social stats over the past 30 years and compare with the previous 30 years.....the pace of acceleration is fantastic....it's exactly as Orwell and Huxley predicted...
The point is that unless we strategise that change, unless we try to channel that energy for social revolution along paths that benefit mankind and the planet, the force of evolution will follow the easiest route.....and the progress along that road has been brilliantly put in your posting above.....it's bloody awful isn't it.....
Perhaps I as a younger person am more interested in that future than you are (and all the old grannies) because my generation will see the crisis point in 2050 whilst yours may not.....so yes, I am passionate about constructive social change now and not later...I don't want to see my children grow up in the same terrible society that you've described....can you understand my passion?
When I'm faced with people that resist change I get very frustrated because they are effectively condemning me and my children to live not only in the same impersonal society that their generation has created....but a new monster version of it that is developing around us today.......
Ok so we can't change things from the Love Shack..... I know that...... but I wanted to see what the climate for change was like in your society....and I have been very disappointed... .my feelings at the end of all this is that no one is interested in the planet but simply in their own lives.....I have tried to present some new ideas but most people only laugh at them without even bothering to learn all the details......they pour scorn on anything
they don't understand and always think of strangers with suspicion and fear.....it's been like going into a pub full of people that know each other and who only want to know other people like them....Molec once wrote to me 'It's like being on the Titanic and you're trying to tell the passengers they ought to get into the lifeboats but they're more interested in looking after their jewels and fur coats'.......I think he was right....
You have written very kindly to me since you came back and I thank you for that......what a pity that you didn't write like that to me when all this blew up...I think that things would have been much better had people asked about my ideas rather than just slag them off as rubbish without even finding out about them.....because of that, all the debate has been about the way we treat each other rather than than the real subject at hand.....how to sort
out this bloody mess of a planet.......I'm sorry if my words have offended you or anyone else......but it's very difficult being out there on your own screaming for change when no one is really interested in much else than their own lives......
I hear what you and Imi (thanks for your kind letters by the way Imi) are saying about keeping the heat down...and I wish it was possible......but JoSS has a style about her that seems to inflame argument with us progessives....and there's not much I can do to stop that......thanks for listening.
BoySkiSurfer
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Thanx,
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