Church and State blog: Gangster politics

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Gangster politics

Last night was quite windy. From inside my sleeping bag I could see autumn leaves flying down the street. One even flew under the rucksack that serves as my pillow. There was also some rain here and there – tiny drops fell for a few seconds on my face. I was still sweating inside my sleeping bag due to my cold, but this time I took off my coat and slept much better.

Bravehost, a leading web hosting provider, is still giving us trouble. They suspended our NAC website on 15 November, only to put it back the next day after I emailed them for an explanation. According to them, it was a problem with their servers! They have now introduced the letter "o" just before their ads at the bottom of all our pages. It looks like it is a fault of the person who designed the website (me). I will email them again tomorrow.

Things in the library Idea Store Whitechapel got better after I blogged about them (21 November), but only lasted a day. Staff still chat away at the help desk about 5 metres away from where I work about their religious beliefs, their plans for the weekend, their job, etc. The computer beside me can rarely be booked by us – it's that popular. Among the people that use it (all Muslim, with the exception of a few Spanish), some murder the keyboard, others talk over the phone, sometimes they even come in groups of two and three, all wanting to use the computer almost at the same time. At the moment I have beside me a young Muslim woman – she has been on the computer three hours – hitting the keyboard so hard I'm surprised nobody has complained to a member of staff.

The area we are in, Tower Hamlets, has the highest Muslim population in the country, 36.4%. This library, it seems, employs 95% Muslims and most of floor 1 contains Islamic books. I haven't found one single book on secularism, atheism or even humanism.

I was quite affected when I learnt that Alexander Litvinenko – secret agent turned fierce critic of Russia's President Vladimir Putin – died in hospital here on 23 November. Somehow I thought he was going to recover and become a big embarrassment for the Russian President. The fact that Putin thought he could get away with it is pretty revealing. He actually thought a diplomatic incident between Russia and the UK preferable to the prospect of Litvinenko spilling beans. Could Litvinenko's investigation of the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on 7 October have had anything to do with it?

The former foreign minister of the Chechen government in exile in the UK was a visitor to Litivinenko's bedside. He accused the Kremlin of exporting "gangster politics" to London. Surely we could accuse the British government of gangster politics in relation to us? It seems running a network of those abused by church doesn't get you killed, yet with the level of surveillance we are under, and the all too obvious destructive intent of the Metropolitan Police towards us, it doesn't seem we're that far off.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone joined multi-faith speakers at the Methodist Central Hall on 20 November to defend freedom of religious expression. I wonder if the Mayor would be as sympathetic to the cause of those who consider themselves abused by church, be they right-to-die campaigners, gays, stem cell research supporters, or even non-religious people who consider their rights subordinated to those of the religious.

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

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Saturday, November 25, 2006

Gangster politics

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