From: McKenny Michael <bn872@freenet.carleton.ca>
To: talisman@umich.edu <talisman@umich.edu>
Cc: irfan@umich.edu <irfan@umich.edu>
Subject: For Those Suspicious of the UHJ
Date: Wednesday, December 10, 1997 11:02 AM
Greetings from Ottawa.
If you are well, it is well.
This post addresses those who are very suspicious of the words
of the Universal House of Justice concerning the freedom of thought
and expression by Baha'is in cyberspace.
If you see yourself more as one whose loyalty to the Covenant
makes the very concept of such suspicion repugnant, I've posted a
separate message for you.
The important point is that the existence of a widely available
unmoderated USENET news.group on this topic would provide the kind
of public availability of information that traditionally has made
despotic, totalitarian and corrupt administration difficult. The
Baha'i institutions would be even more in the light of public
scrutiny than they have been in the unmoderated e-mail lists whose
membership is numerically small, and subject to identification.
I'll ask the technical question as to whether it is possible for
a lurker on a USENET newsgroup to be identified if s/he doesn't post?
Instead of several dozen members, there could be many thousands
of readers of such a newsgroup, and this weight of being in the eye
of the public will be a great incentive for Baha'i authorities to
behave more in keeping with the ideal, than in accord with what is
normal when authority has absolute control of the media.
Baha'is worried about receiving my treatment of being declared a
non-Baha'i as a result of expressing your views, or worse being
declared one who must be shunned, can consider this. Simply allowing
the newsgroup to exist, simply allowing others to post, and saying
nothing yourself will let you test how it works, to see whether it
does have a beneficial impact. If you really have something, such as
that censored Service of Women Paper which you fear to post, there'll
always be the options of anonymous remailers or relaying this through
some non-Baha'i. Even if I personally am often busy, I'm sure there
are those with more time available who'd be happy to post material
which is flame free etc, but sensitive on ideological grounds.
May this find you very well, and may that long be so.
Peace,
Michael
This is a copy of a post to news.groups on
the topic of Talk.Religion.Bahai
--
"My name's McKenny, Mike McKenny, Warrant Officer, Solar Guard."
(Tom Corbett #1 STAND BY FOR MARS p2)
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