Church and State blog: September 2011

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.

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.

Church and State blog

Friday, September 16, 2011

Our live-in landlady threatens illegal moves against us

Friday, September 09, 2011

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

Monday, September 05, 2011

Introductory letter to the European Court of Human Rights

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