Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Censored documents now publicly available


Last year, I uploaded a series of documents, concerning the censorship being practiced by the Cryonics Institute (CI), to the Files Page of the CI Yahoo Group. These Documents, available only to CI members, were deleted. 

Just prior to the 2011 CI Board of Director's Election, a libelous statement, "Opposition to the candidacy of David Stodolsky for Director of CI," was distributed to all voting members of CI. I immediately issued a document listing the errors in that Statement. However, the Statement was reprinted without correction in the magazine Long Life (Jan.-Feb. 2012, Vol. 44, No. 1-2, pp. 12-14). Comments on the libelous statement and myself appeared in next issue of Long Life (March - April 2012, Vol. 44, No. 3-4, p. 23). On page 11 of Long Life, Vol. 44, No. 5-6 (May-June 2012) a paragraph mentioning me appears on the lower right hand side of the page. It says, in case Members feel I should have received more votes in the Election, "we're printing a series of letters that was sent to CI voting members." This all suggests a continuing pattern of defamation, part of what I have termed a "coverup."

Due to the continuing censorship and libel, I am now making public all related Documents. This appears to be the only option left, if I am to protect my reputation and if CI Members are going to understand what is happening at CI. 

A summary of events preceding the 2011 Election is presented in Breakdown of Democracy v2Details appear in Censorship and Democracy?Unfair "Election Coverage" by Long Life MagazineThe Customer as Enemy, and Our Path to DestructionLibelous statement distributed by the Cryonics Institute and Libelous statement distributed .... - Correction were prepared around the time of that Election. A zip archive containing all Resolutions and a mailing list Guidelines document are also available. Documents are in the PDF format.


Direct link to the Google+ CI page mentioned in the first comment below

8 comments:

  1. Managers are needed for the new Google+ CI Page. Managers are able to post to the Page, delete comments that violate Google+ Terms of Service, etc. Managers must be CI Members.

    Comments can be added by any Google+ user.

    The Page has been established, so that Members will have an uncensored forum for discussion of CI.

    Please forward your email address, so that an invitation can be issued.


    CI Page:

    https://plus.google.com/b/102623558643422094970/

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  2. If managers can delete comments, how can this site be regarded as being uncensored?

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  3. Every Page must conform to the Google+ Terms of Service. If Users violate those Terms, they are breaching their contractual agreement with Google. Therefore, their Comment is invalid and Google is not obligated (or, perhaps, permitted by Law) to publish it. In practice, it is the responsibility of the Managers of a Page to ensure that the Google+ Terms of Service are not violated. If they fail to do so, then the Page could be deleted. Therefore, Managers have no choice when it comes to Comments that violate the Terms of Service.

    The objective of this new Forum is to permit as wide a range of discussion as possible. Therefore, only material which violates the Terms of Service will be deleted. If abuse of this freedom restricts discussion, by overloading the Page with irrelevant material, by spreading commercial product information (spam), etc., a clear policy statement will be added to the About section of the CI Page. Users will always know what is acceptable as publishable on the Page. We can contrast this with the current situation with forums controlled by the CI Leadership. These have no policy concerning acceptable material. Restrictions on publication are arbitrary and censorship is often surreptitious. Typically, material is deleted without any notice. Text can even be banned after an Editor has accepted the topic as appropriate. There is only one publishable point of view in these Forums, that of the Leadership. The new Page will be the Member's forum, where anyone can present their point of view.

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  5. The below is the "big picture" of Events in few words and, therefore, oversimplifies and states as fact my opinion (no quoting please). The facts are available in the Censored Documents:

    The context of the events, which led to the censoring of my documents, was the establishment of the Human Biopreservation Institute (HBI), a new industry association including CI. I was serving as Acting Secretary of the HBI. As part of the startup process, I established a new social networking site for use by members of all companies included in the HBI. I had a collaboration agreement with a software developer, also a CI member, who was writing an application to be installed on mobile phones. This Application would connect to the Social Networking Site and provide a range of functions, including the ability to trigger an emergency response in case of an acute health problem. The HBI Social Networking Site would have allowed communication among members of CI that was not under the control of the President. He was also opposed to the establishment of the HBI, because it would have exercised supervision over CI and, therefore, his actions as President. He undermined my efforts by instigating a personal attack upon me by one of his friends, who was a member of another of the HBI's candidate organizations. This attack was based upon actions I had taken in connection with an election at CI.

    I was running for the Board of Directors of CI at the time. The President of CI was running against me. He opposed my bid by censoring my communications with the Members. This censorship applied to the official CI Mailing List, the Magazine received by all Members, and documents that could be sent directly to Members via the Postal Service (this involved violation of the Michigan Nonprofit Corporation Act - M.C.L.A. 450.2487). In addition, he organized a libelous statement and ensured it was transmitted to all voting members of CI just prior to the Election. He and his friends organized a campaign of defamation against me using all means of Organizational communication, including the Mailing List and the Magazine. Even though I prepared a statement documenting the falsehoods in the Letter to Voting Members, this Statement was published unchanged in the Magazine sent to all Members and available to the general public. As a result of this dispute, the Application Developer terminated our collaboration. I closed the Social Network and terminated activity related to the HBI shortly thereafter.

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  6. Not sure why you think that would be ok to do. I'm glad CI stopped you. You may want to be a little more diplomatic in the future. All these Google+ Pages and Blog Websites make you look a little extreme. If I were a member of CI I would not want you to have access to my information. And I would want to be bothered with other CI members current "pet projects". You have no right to intrude upon others buddy. Get over yourself.

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  8. I am afraid that what we have here is an example of the ill informed comment so common in the cryonics movement today.

    First, I am told "Not sure why you think that..." What does the "that" refer to? Then, what is this person glad was "stopped"? Freedom of speech? Finally, I am told I "have no right to intrude upon others." What is the intrusion? Is transmitting a message to other members of a democratic organization concerning the governance of that organization an intrusion? According to democratic theory, it is a precondition for organizational function.

    So, here we have someone who isn't willing to leave their name, offering an opinion. Anonymity is often associated with irresponsible behavior. In this case, the person was not responsible enough to evaluate the substantive problems of the Movement I describe. The comment addresses the superficial fact that there is a disagreement and the anonymous author offers his/her support to those I oppose. Of course, anyone could offer unlimited indications of support anonymously. So, a comment like this can be considered little more than propaganda. Unfortunately, it appears the person actually believes what is stated is meaningful and responsible.

    This person most likely came to this page via the Venturist List, which offers this injunction:
    You can bring up things which you think are a problem as long as you present them respectfully towards everyone who might read or post here. We reserve the right to block any posts which in our sole opinion are detrimental to our organization and its goals.

    This is the kind of arbitrary censorship that this person most likely supports. Only "happy talk" is sure to get to the Subscribers.

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