Posted on 06/25/2002 3:42:21 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
The following email is being circulated to our members by various disgruntled former FReepers:
Subject: The Future of Our Free RepublicDear Fellow Free Republic Member,
Many of us at Free Republic are distressed by the extraordinary level of censorship that has been so obviously going on. It is very obvious that individual posts, entire threads, and the entire work of members who have been highly regarded are disappearing into a Memory Hole.
Scores of us have organized an e-mail network that is independent of the communication controls presently, and sadly, being used at our Free Republic. We have carefully documented the unmistakeable evidence that most of the posts, threads, and posters that are vaporized completely are overwhelmingly targeted for their political stance on the Right. These are not Leftwingers. These are not even Middle-of-the-Roaders. These are not disruptors. These are not foul-mouthed delinquents. These are fellow patriots on the Right who disagree with the controllers of FR on specific issues that are now hotly debated by the Right. We have documented that FR will parade before you, as if to hide all of the great posters whose work has been destroyed, a straw-man delinquent that has been banned. This is deceptive.
Treating these fellow patriots on the Right so shabbily is not right. As shabbily as those banned into the Memory Hole are being treated, the most shabbily treated of all are all of the good folks on Free Republic themselves. We came here for honest debate. Free Republic advertised itself as a Forum for honest debate. Without that honest debate...everything at Free Republic becomes shabby.
We can do much better. As a measure of how intense the simmering feelings have gotten among members on this unjustifiable use of deleting, censoring, and banning please link to the following thread. You will notice that one simple and sincere plea from one of our finest members has spontaneously touched off a prairie fire of approximately 500 posts in a mere 18 hours. If it isn't Memory Holed this thread may shoot into the thousands.
If you would like to receive anonymous updates of information concerning the hundreds of Freepers who have networked via e-mail to restore the wonderful honest debate to Free Republic, just drop an e-mail of just one or two words if you like for extreme brevity to:
StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
And, here's that link back to the snowballing thread at FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/704701/posts
Thank you so much for giving your thought to this vital matter for our Internet home.
Sincerely, StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
Your only "bad" argument, Jim.
If:
"The vast majority of Americans have never been shot or killed by the FBI or DEA, have never been unjustly accused of a crime, nor have had their property confiscated by the government for unConstitutional purposes".....
This must mean that there are no problems to worry about.
I've only had one thread pulled, and one stern FR gram from you regarding that thread.
LOL.
Guess you're just not trying hard enough to allow your convictions and passion to get through.
Curiously, the current Islamic world problem is what got me a membership in your club.
Kinda makes me feel warm and fuzzy...
"Thanks [name of one of our best FR posters omitted], You can forward any e-mails you get from StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com (or any of the other communications nodes that we have outside of FR) to [name omitted of a great poster banned yesterday]. Among the reasons for this back channel of communication are to help folks like [name omitted]: a)find new and other forums on the Internet where their fine writing can be effective (like LibertyForum.org and LibertyPost), and; b)learn how to defeat the censorship mechanisms at FR to get back onto the forum, and; c)give them a big thank you for their work on behalf of free speech for patriots; and d)get them to give us more good ideas and leads drawn from their hard work.
Each of us will naturally develop our own little, average, big, or huge "circle" of fellow patriots who know and trust us as reliable communicators. That's natural, easy, and more powerful than centralizing ourselves. And that way we don't get stuck with any of us having to agree all the time with any one of us. That's the dead end than Robinson has driven FR into.
By trying to scare or chill good folks on FR into toeing his line, Robinson is really closing off the energy and future of FR. Let me share this little obvious "secret" with you: the more Robinson censors our folks the more he BUILDS INTEREST in what we have to say! Thank you JR! Keep it up! You can't win as a censor on the wide-open Internet. If you attempt to censor us you GIVE US the free gift of white-hot interest in our forbidden writings. And if you stop censoring us...then we've also won, since that's our goal - to be heard on an open forum. Maybe at some point Robinson will drop his ego long enough to realize that we don't even care personally about him....all we care about is free speech for patriot writers.
As far as Robinson's concerned, as the guy who owns one of the printing presses, all we're going to do is make him somewhat rich if he keeps censoring us, and really rich if he stops. Thanks for some of the best posts on FR ever, Vallandigham P.S. We need to spread info on how JR tracks our identities. I'm only a half-ass techie. We need some real pro's to share with us ways to get around whatever cookies, or IP address recognizers, or other red flags that prevent us from getting back in to post after we've been banned. Some of my methods are working. Other things I try fail. But one way or another I get back in. Even if I have to spend a small amount of dough on extra IP services (which I do).
Anybody who'd like to know more about what StopCensoringUs and friends are doing about the oppressive level of censorship at FR can e-mail anytime confidentially to: StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com.
Keep up the good work, Vallandigham"
That makes a total of six of these type of emails: four from Vallandigham and two from some brave genius known as "anonymous." I thought you might be interested.
Let's see.....Posted at 6:42 AM Eastern....that would be 3:42 AM Pacific Time.....
Jim, do you EVER sleep?
Many Thanks for all your wonderful work!
What a shabby little paragraph this is.
Ironic,ain't it?
I'm generally with you, but "censorship" implies that the poster has some sort of protected "right" to use FR. This is a private forum and its owners/moderators can toss anyone they choose in the same way a small business can refuse to serve a customer. Supply and demand will come into play if folks think there is excessive "censorship", and I see more FR users not less.
The have. It's called the Liberty Forum. Click on one of the links and see for yourself. Lots of anarchists and anti-American posters there. I don't think this is what the forum founders wanted,but they were determined to have a totally "free-speech" site,so that's what they ended up with.
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