Check out our news website Church and State to find out about our writers and read some amazing stories: http://churchandstate.org.uk. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the site; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State".
Yesterday evening, as I was connecting with like-minded people (other atheists, humanists, etc) by seeking to add them to my list of Facebook friends, I was stopped by a FB warning. Since I first posted on my wall on 9 March an article by Jack Huberman “How To Save Our Secular America”, I have been doing just that and I now have 261 friends. Hardly abusive behavior – here are some comments my FB friends have left on my wall:
“I assume I really don’t know you but if you a humanist, I am happy to be your friend. I see that you have been working on very important projects and do let me know if I could be of any help.”
“Hi Lola, nice to be in touch with you. I am a secular humanist working with the marginalised communities in India. …”
“Oh... I like your website! I’ll be adding it to my blogroll. We obviously share a lot of the same goals.”
“Pleased to meet you Lola!!!”
“Hello Lola, It is a pleasure meeting you as well! It is always nice to meet a friend with common views. Stay well.”
Oh, and the latest comment: “Hi Lola, thanks for adding me. I’m intrigued by your work and your website. The Network of those Abused by Church. What a wonderfully gutsy approach!”
I haven’t added new friends since the warning and Declan says I should get my head around the fact that it is likely that I am going to be blocked or my account permanently disabled: hasn’t his petition to the UN in support of therapeutic cloning been brought to a halt through spamming - despite that 24 Nobel laureates have signed it – and our website twice removed from the internet (see our “About us”)?
A short while ago, I received an email from a FB friend who also happens to be a recognised authority in stem cell research and has signed Declan’s petition. The email is in relation to a Christopher Hitchens video that I posted on my wall yesterday evening on the UN's Anti-Blasphemy Resolution – American Atheists will be demonstrating outside the UN next Saturday. It has had a good response but it seems he isn’t able to add his comment (among the comments last night, I announced my receipt of the FB warning) and is not sure if Facebook “is blocking it or not”. He is using an iPhone, but was able to write on somebody else’s wall. “It’s insane what FB is doing,” he says.
I keep thinking about the video “The Four Horsemen”, convened by The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS), which features an unmoderated 2-hour discussion between Richard Dawkins (FB friend), Daniel Dennett (NAC Honorary Associate), Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Within 20 seconds, they raise the whole issue of religion being “held off the table of rational criticism” (Sam Harris).
Yesterday, US President Barack Obama signed an executive order to lift restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, overturning a Bush administration policy that patients and medical researchers said hindered the development of new medical treatments. Obama signed the order before a White House audience packed with scientists – the Chicago Sun-Times gives a list of participants and attendees.
“Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources, it is also about protecting free and open inquiry,” Obama said. “It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”
Bernard Siegel, executive director of the Genetics Policy Institute (GPI), said in a statement: “In order to provide certainty, the next step is to protect embryonic stem cell research by legislation. Building on the momentum, it’s time to repeal the Dickey-Wicker Amendment that serves as a blockade for funding research on work on embryos discarded from in vitro fertilization procedures to derive new cell lines or somatic cell nuclear transfer. All stem cell advocates applaud Congresswoman Diana DeGette who has expressed her intention to seek reversal of this fundamental funding restriction.”
The Associated Press reports that scientists are cheering Obama’s lifting of federal funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, hopeful the move will open the financial floodgates to speed new treatments. “It’s wonderful. We are elated,” said Jan Nolta, who directs the stem cell research program at the University of California at Davis. “Now that we can use the federal funds, it will just go so much more quickly.”
Michael West, chief executive of BioTime, said he expected to see increased demand for the hundreds of stem cell lines sold by his Emeryville-based company. More importantly to the industry, West said, private investors will be less afraid of putting their money into stem cell startups. Venture capitalists and big pharmaceutical companies in the past have been skittish about investing in stem cell companies out of fear that federal regulations could tighten even further, he said. “It’s a green light that will go a long way in my experience to people committing capital. Not knowing the future was really a major risk factor.”
Not everyone is excited though. The International Herald Tribune reports today that after Obama signed the order, the Vatican and US and Italian Church leaders condemned the move. Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on pro-life activities, called Obama’s decision “a sad victory of politics over science and ethics”.
The Chicago Tribune and The Capital Times carry some quotes from well-known researchers, many of whom have signed Declan’s petition to the UN on somatic cell nuclear transfer, sometimes referred to as “therapeutic cloning” to distinguish it from reproductive cloning research. Below is a statement from James Thomson, professor of anatomy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who is credited as the world’s first person ever to isolate an embryonic stem cell, first from a rhesus monkey in 1995 and then from a human in 1998. Prof Thomson is often acknowledged by his peers as “the founder of the field”. He said:
The executive action by President Obama lifting restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research is a welcome milestone for our field. The decision will help restore America as a leader in this field and is a clear path out of a policy thicket that has slowed the pace of discovery for eight years. It also removes a stigma that has discouraged many bright young people from embarking on careers in stem cell research. Research on embryonic stem cells remains critically important. We have many unanswered questions, and the only way to realize the full potential of embryonic stem cells and other types of stem cells is a level playing field and unfettered inquiry. Human-induced pluripotent stem cells - the transformed adult cells that seem to mimic the qualities of embryonic stem cells - would not have been possible without research on human embryonic stem cells. We are grateful to President Obama for the courage of his decision as well as for the broad bipartisan support our work has received in Washington.
I am a former social psychologist from Madrid. My husband Declan, a former physical education teacher, is from Dublin. We came to England in 2003 from Ireland with the then-aim of forming a network organisation for those abused by church. We were twice forced, through no fault of our own, to live rough on the streets of London for almost 4 years in total, from November 2006 to July 2009 and from April 2013 to May 2014. Declan established Network for Church Monitoring as a nonprofit company limited by guarantee in 2011. We are currently living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' Section 21 eviction notice from our landlord, Peabody Trust housing association. This notwithstanding that our tenancy is a flat that falls under the Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (see paragraph 3 under "Church and State" below). We have no children.
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
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[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).
[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.
