Church and State blog: January 2016

Saturday, January 30, 2016

We have exceeded 1/4 million hits this month despite three Facebook blocks

In a letter dated 22 December 2015, the Applicant's local MP, Shadow Communities Minister Lyn Brown, stated that she had written to the managing director of Facebook UK seeking an explanation for why Facebook had twice blocked the Applicant's wife from posting to groups and removed all her postings to groups since 2010 (1-4 December and 5-7 December 2015). The Applicant had already issued a European Small Claims Court letter before claim to Facebook Ireland, the entity with which users based outside the USA and Canada have a contractual relationship. Despite the strength of both of these letters, Facebook has subsequently three times blocked the Applicant's wife from posting to groups (6-9 January, 12-15 January and 20-22 January 2016) and twice removed all her postings to groups since 2010 (6-9 January, 12-15 January 2016), each again without any stated reason or cause.

- Excerpt from Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations

1. House Republicans Vote To Allow Employers To Fire Women For Using Birth Control

2. Catholic Archbishop says domestic violence is caused by women 'not obeying men'

3. Cardinal says gay couples shouldn't be invited to family gatherings if children are present

4. Retired priest: 'Hell' was invented by the church to control people with fear

5. Christianity: 12 Painful Facts

6. Astrophysicist Writes Brutal Response To WSJ Article Claiming Science Has Proven God Exists

7. Fundamentalist Religion Will Destroy The World

8. Ten Contradictions Theists Just Can't Stop Making

9. Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots

10. Humans will be extinct in 100 years says eminent scientist

Shadow Communities Minister Lyn Brown wrote to Facebook UK on our behalf last month.

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

About Church and State

Letter from our Chairman

If you would like to help us personally, please feel free to pick up one of our books (shameless plug, I know, but every sale helps us to work our way out of our precarious situation). There is currently five books available in Church and State Press here, and all proceeds from the first four of these books go to us with the authors' permission. Thank you all for all the support you have given us, and I hope we can keep our Church and State website going despite the constant threats.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Rent arrears letter issued in error? Information Commissioner's Office finds that the Ministry of Justice has breached the Data Protection Act in respect of the Greater London Authority's application to contest the court's jurisdiction (WITH UPDATE 27/1/2016)

County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice

Following our receipt this morning of the rent arrears letter above (issued in error?), Declan has added a subsection to paragraph 37 of his updated complaint to the United Nations that he is currently working on pursuant to Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The new subsection (ii) deals with the Information Commissioner's Office finding last month that the Ministry of Justice had breached the Data Protection Act 1998 by simply ignoring his subject access request for a copy of the Greater London Authority's application to contest the court's jurisdiction (to hear his claim against it for terminating our eligibility for our flat without the right of review or appeal), filed at the Central London County Court on 14 October 2015. That paragraph 37 now reads:

Draft paragraph 37 of Declan's next updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

37. The following three incidents of late serve to highlight the Applicant and his wife's vulnerability through no fault of their own:

(i) On 9 December 2015 the Applicant's wife's laptop was rendered useless for work after it was made technically incapable of publishing material on their Church and State website. She could not use the laptop to create a WordPress post, add images, or click on most of the platform's buttons. This could only have been an attack on her laptop because the platform worked perfectly well on the Applicant's laptop and on an old laptop they use as back up. She had posted videos of the attack to the N4CM blog before the device was mysteriously returned to normal functioning the following afternoon.

(ii) On 16 December 2015 the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) upheld the Applicant's complaint against the Ministry of Justice for breach of the Data Protection Act 1998. The ICO found that the Ministry had mishandled the Applicant's subject access request for a copy of the GLA's application to contest the court's jurisdiction, filed at the Central London County Court on 14 October 2015 (see Annex 18, pp. 45-46).

(iii) In a letter dated 22 December 2015, the Applicant's local MP, Shadow Communities Minister Lyn Brown, stated that she had written to the managing director of Facebook UK seeking an explanation for why Facebook had twice blocked the Applicant's wife from posting to groups and removed all her postings to groups since 2010 (1-4 December and 5-7 December 2015). The Applicant had already issued a European Small Claims Court letter before claim to Facebook Ireland, the entity with which users based outside the USA and Canada have a contractual relationship. Despite the strength of both of these letters, Facebook has subsequently three times blocked the Applicant's wife from posting to groups (6-9 January, 12-15 January and 20-22 January 2016) and twice removed all her postings to groups since 2010 (6-9 January, 12-15 January 2016), and without any stated reason or cause.

[Links added]

This is the annex regarding the Ministry of Justice's breach of the Data Protection Act referred to in paragraph 37(ii) above:

For years we have considered the removal of our flat door in 2012 the most outrageous attack we have ever been subjected to. However, we actually think it was topped with the attack on my laptop referred to in paragraph 37(i) above. What if someone had just bought a laptop for a £1,000 or more? This is one of the photos I posted of the removal of our flat door in 2012:

UPDATE 27 January (12.26pm): Our rent account is not in arrears! This is Declan's email to Family Mosaic this afternoon establishing that their rent arrears letter was issued to him in error:

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Facebook: Despite a Shadow Communities Minister's letter and Declan's pre-action letter for the European Small Claims Court, Facebook Ireland blocks me again as soon as another article is about to take off

Related blog post (15 December 2015): Could Jillian York, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s director of international freedom of expression, take an interest in Facebook Ireland?

Last month our Church and State website had 1/4 million hits. This month has hardly started and I have already been blocked. The block came as soon as this article was about to take off:

Shadow Communities Minister Lyn Brown wrote to Facebook UK on our behalf last month.

But in fact it is the secretive censors in Facebook's European HQ in Dublin who decide what is - and what isn't. This is Declan's pre-action letter to Facebook Ireland:

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

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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).

[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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