Friday, September 16, 2011

Our live-in landlady threatens illegal moves against us

This morning our live-in landlady, human rights activist Belinda McKenzie, put under our door a receipt for the rent I paid on 26 August for the previous month together with a note stating that next Thursday she was going to deal with Declan’s claim for housing benefit, without his authorization. (On 17 August Belinda served us with 6 months notice backdated almost a month, and last month Haringey Council left us with an unprecedented £77 shortfall in rent to pay out of the £211 we receive every two weeks in jobseeker’s allowance). Perhaps Belinda is just not aware, but this of course is an illegal practice which, if it were deemed acceptable by housing authorities, would leave recipients of housing benefit at the mercy of landlords. A landlord doesn’t like a tenant? No problem – all he has to do is ask the local housing authority to stop that tenant’s housing benefit! Declan wasted no time getting back to Belinda on this:

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Belinda is not your usual landlord: apart from being involved with the Iranian community for more than 20 years, she is also active in the Stop the War Coalition, Hollie Demands Justice, and abuse in the Church, among other causes. She also had MI5 whistleblower David Shayler living in one of the rooms below us for a couple of years, until 2007 more or less. According to the BBC, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair"; in 2002, he went to jail for seven weeks for breaking the Official Secrets Act. By around 2007, he was successfully neutralised: he changed his name to Delores Kane, declared himself to be Jesus, and became a squatter. A New Statesman article dated 11 September 2006 featuring Belinda and Shayler gives no indication that he believed he was the Messiah at that time; whilst a Daily Mail interview with Shayler explicitly shows that he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007.


Human rights activist Belinda McKenzie speaking at the UK Rally against child abuse, 4 June 2011, Trafalgar Square

We would love to know how Belinda does it.

Friday, September 09, 2011

My IP is blocked by the web host for the third time


Within less than two weeks of Declan’s dispatch on 10 August of his application above to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) regarding the interception of our communications and unlawful directed surveillance, our web host SiteGround twice blocked my IP address (see blog here) – in addition, within the same period, Facebook disabled my account (see blog here); our live-in landlady, human rights activist Belinda McKenzie, served us with five months notice to vacate what has been our home since 2009 (see blog here); and Haringey Council left us with an unprecedented £77 shortfall in rent to pay (see blog here). This afternoon SiteGround blocked my IP for the third time, meaning my browser wasn’t able to access the site at all.

As Declan wrote in paragraph 12 of his application to the IPT, our chairman, Dr Stephen Mumford, has been funding the N4CM website since December 2010, after the site was removed from the internet without explanation by Just Host, a web hosting provider we had paid for hosting until 2015. According to SiteGround this evening, there have been “a large number of simultaneous connections towards the server”, when in fact, as I informed them this afternoon, they have had me restricted to one tab for over two weeks:
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It’s not just SiteGround. Facebook now threatens to permanently disable my account the next time I post on a Facebook page with similar interests (see blog here). Because of this threat, I have not been posting on Facebook pages with similar interests. Nonetheless, “Exposing religious fundamentalism in the US”, which I uploaded two days ago, has been shared around Facebook 102 times, but according to the Facebook widget they recommend to webmasters to let people know what postings are currently popular, it has been shared 70 times. “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult” has been shared 115 times, but according to the Facebook widget, it has only been shared 85 times. And “Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That’s Undermining Democracy”, which has been shared in Facebook 198 times, Facebook says has only been shared 43 times. (Here is an article that has been shared over 1,000 times.)
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So my work on N4CM has been decimated, Facebook is effectively barring me from posting on Facebook pages with similar interests, and now there would appear to be an attempt to make N4CM seem less popular than it is. What's next?

Monday, September 05, 2011

Introductory letter to the European Court of Human Rights


It was only on 10 August that Declan dispatched the application above to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) regarding the interception of our communications and unlawful directed surveillance. However, on Saturday we received a letter from the Tribunal dismissing Declan's claim; and, for good measure, gratuitously insulting us too - by calling Declan's application "obviously unsustainable". The insult is particularly offensive because within two weeks of the dispatch of the application, Facebook disabled my account (see blog here); our web host, SiteGround, twice blocked my IP address (see blog here); our live-in landlady, human rights activist Belinda McKenzie, served us with five months notice to vacate what has been our home since 2009 (see blog here); and Haringey Council left us with an unprecedented £77 shortfall in rent to pay (see blog here). Now Facebook threatens to permanently disable my account the next time I post on a Facebook page with similar interests (see previous blog).

Perhaps this is just the IPT's way of going about their business - after all, as Declan points out in his introductory letter to the European Court of Human Rights below, the Tribunal has only ever upheld ten complaints since its inception in 2000. Declan also mentions a 2009 report from the New Internationalist headlined, with good evidence, "Police surveillance and intimidation of political activists in the UK is hitting new heights". The Guardian recently exposed that an 85-year-old peace campaigner has been classified by police as a "domestic extremist".

Anyway, Declan has wasted no time kicking off his case under Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life and correspondence) and 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights:
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We have yet to get a receipt from Belinda for the full rent we paid on 26 August. MI5 whistleblower David Shayler lived for a couple of years in one of the rooms below us, until 2007 more or less. According to the BBC, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair". By around 2007, he had been successfully neutralised: he changed his name to Delores Kane, declared himself to be Jesus, and became a squatter. A New Statesman article dated 11 September 2006 featuring Belinda and Shayler gives no indication that he believed he was the Messiah at that time, nor that he had changed his name to Delores Kane.