CensorWear Chronicles, Chap 7:
AP Press Release

By: Vindictive | 20Dec2000

Chronos Building, center top   Rendered invisible by AbsoSafe. Images courtesy of Chronos Magazine AP National Chronos, SerenityFlame Censored by AbsoSafe by NANCY BENACCIA Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- Yesterday they were both there. Now they are gone... At least, to people wearing AbsoSafe Glasses. If you are wearing the AbsoSafe filtering safety goggles that have been all the rage during the past few months, you may not realize it, but two publications -- the venerable Chronos Magazine and the youth rights alternative newspaper SerenityFlame -- no longer appear to be available at the newstands. Office spaces occupied by Chronos in New York City and and SerenityFlame in Bellevue Washington have -- overnight -- disappeared from view. Although they are, of course, still there, people who wear AbsoSafe Glasses will be unable to see the Chronos Buiding, the business complex of SerenityFlame's headquarters...or anything else related to Chronos or SerenityFlame, including their publications. Both companies have been added to the CleanLens system database as objectionable. Even more unusual, the glasses have no error code indicator that normally warns wearers that what they are viewing has being censored. What does AbsoSafe find so objectionable about Chronos and SerenityFlame that they would -- in effect -- delete them from existence? AbsoSafe isn't commenting, but a good guess would be that they took offense to bad reviews they received from both publications. Earlier this month, Hazel Bennetton of SerenityFlame tested a pair of AbsoSafe Glasses, comparing what was censored with what wasn't. In short, it wasn't a good review. The CleanLens system filtered Tylenol, killer whales, puppy dogs and hockey players. A few days later, Mike Kravitz of Chronos Magazine published an editorial that questioned AbsoSafe's assumption that anything that is unusual or not mainstream -- Libertarians, Wiccans, homosexuals etc. -- deserves to be censored. Next thing you know, Chronos and SerenityFlame no longer exist. Their offices, their publications, even their advertisements have been snuffed out of the view of millions of people who allow AbsoSafe to filter their environments. And AbsoSafe users probably won't even notice. So much for freedom of speech and the press. It now appears that one corporate executive in Alabama -- whoever made the decision to add Chronos and SerenityFlame to their database -- has more authority than the US Constitution would ever allow an elected official. "O brave new world that has such people in it." AP-NY-08-29-02 0946EST