Church and State blog: Facebook's 20th block against our Church and State website since 1 December 2015 (WITH UPDATE 19/6/2017)

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Facebook's 20th block against our Church and State website since 1 December 2015 (WITH UPDATE 19/6/2017)

Re: Blocks on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016

From the Update 19 June (8.05am) below:

"I have updated my blog post of 16 January with yesterday's 505th block on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016. The blog post also not only reveals a record-breaking 52 such blocks in one week at the end of April (an unprecedented escalation that kicked off with our focus on Denmark's cartoon crisis; 94 blocks last month), but it reveals the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site which continues to this day."

An unprecedented ten blocks in one day on 7 May with our publication of Atheist Ireland republishes 25 blasphemous quotes in solidarity with Stephen Fry. 21 blocks last week; five blocks yesterday; no blocks since midnight today (as of 8.05am).

The War on Free Expression

This morning public access to our Church and State website has been denied once again. I have just updated my blog post of 16 January with this morning's 422nd block on access to the site since 26 July 2016. Our Network for Church Monitoring (N4CM) Facebook page has also been scrambled. This, as revealed below, is Facebook's 20th block against our Church and State website since 1 December 2015. Don Collins, President of the Washington, DC-based International Services Assistance Fund, writes: "Glad you compiled this odious record of mistaken blockage. What possesses the site? Surely after multiple postings they must know your content is neither lewd nor extreme." This is a screenshot of what our N4CM Facebook page looks like at the moment:

The screenshot makes my case to Facebook this morning:

For the attention of Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Facebook

17 May 2017

Dear Facebook,

Our Network for Church Monitoring (N4CM) Facebook page has been scrambled for the administrator at https://www.facebook.com/networkforchurchmonitoring.

This morning I am unable to see any of my postings on our four laptops and two browsers, nor am I able to post anything or manage the wall (please see my screenshot attached). The wall is currently running on posts I scheduled last night. When I log out from Facebook and then click on a link to the N4CM Facebook page, all appears to be fine. In other words I am apparently experiencing an administrator's block only.

This is Facebook's 20th block since 1 December 2015.

1st 1-4 December 2015 (4 days)
2nd 5-7 December 2015 (3 days)
3rd 6-9 January 2016 (4 days)
4th 12-15 January 2016 (4 days)
5th 20-22 January 2016 (3 days)
6th 13-16 February 2016 (4 days)
7th 23-26 March 2016 (4 days)
8th 20-23 May 2016 (4 days)
9th 25-30 May 2016 (6 days)
10th 1-3 July 2016 (3 days)
11th 7-8 September 2016 (2 days)
12th 21-22 September 2016 (3 days)
13th 27-28 September 2016 (2 days)
14th 29 September - 3 October 2016 (5 days)
15th 4-5 October 2016 (2 days)
16th 18-23 October 2016 (6 days)
17th 9-14 December 2016 (6 days)
18th 4-6 January 2017 (3 days)
19th 20-23 January 2017 (4 days)

Don Collins, President of the Washington, DC-based International Services Assistance Fund, writes: "Surely after multiple postings [Facebook] must know your content is neither lewd nor extreme." Don often sends me material to publish on our Church and State website, which I then post to our Facebook wall.

Please note that we currently have an international list of 117 Honorary Associates, including two Nobel prize winners. Since Facebook's 16th block last October, 87 distinguished scholars have given us permission to add their names to the list.

Thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter.

Yours faithfully,

Lola Heavey
Webmaster
Network for Church Monitoring

"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

2 October 2016: Complaint to Facebook Chairman, Chief Executive and Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg on day 4 of Facebook's 14th block since 1 December 2015

Re: Facebook

Draft paragraph 42 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.

42. On 13 August 2011, then Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone wrote to Facebook on the Applicant's behalf, asking that they explain why the Applicant's wife had been barred. The bar was subsequently lifted; however, since 1 December 2015, Facebook have blocked the Applicant's wife from posting to a page(s) and/or groups on twenty separate occasions, and up to six days at a time (each of these blocks is well accounted for in the N4CM blog). On 22 December 2015, Shadow Home Office Minister Lyn Brown made an enquiry on the Applicant's behalf to Steve Hatch, the Managing Director of Facebook UK, asking if he could offer an explanation as to the terms and conditions the Applicant's wife was alleged to have broken twice previously. To the best of the Applicant's knowledge, Mr Hatch did not respond to this letter. The Applicant's wife only ever posts to groups that are specific to an article's subject and that she is well familiar with, and she only ever posts articles that she has already published on the Church and State website. Nonetheless, Facebook have responded to only one of the Applicant's wife's twenty appeals since 1 December 2015, citing "technical problems" on 14 January 2017 in relation to the eighteenth block listed below.

1st 1-4 December 2015 (4 days)
2nd 5-7 December 2015 (3 days)
3rd 6-9 January 2016 (4 days)
4th 12-15 January 2016 (4 days)
5th 20-22 January 2016 (3 days)
6th 13-16 February 2016 (4 days)
7th 23-26 March 2016 (4 days)
8th 20-23 May 2016 (4 days)
9th 25-30 May 2016 (6 days)
10th 1-3 July 2016 (3 days)
11th 7-8 September 2016 (2 days)
12th 21-22 September 2016 (3 days)
13th 27-28 September 2016 (2 days)
14th 29 September - 3 October 2016 (5 days)
15th 4-5 October 2016 (2 days)
16th 18-23 October 2016 (6 days)
17th 9-14 December 2016 (6 days)
18th 4-6 January 2017 (3 days)
19th 20-23 January 2017 (4 days)
20th 17 May 2017 (day 1)

Facebook UK Managing Director Steve Hatch

UPDATE 19 June (8.05am): When it comes to stopping me from posting Church and State articles directly to a page(s) and/or groups, Facebook's 20th block since 1 December 2015 was confined to one day. This is not to say that there's not this and other kinds of Facebook blocks in store for us this month. This is my report to Facebook on 6 June citing four other kinds of blocks of late (the 4th block remains ongoing):

6 June 2017

Dear Facebook,

On 5 April I reported that the page listing all the groups I belong to was not working. With this rectified, I reported on 10 April that I couldn't schedule posts on my page. Then I reported on 12 April that my scheduled posts were not posting. Now, since 8pm last night, every time I post to my page a link to an excerpt from a book by one of France's leading public intellectuals, it disappears from the page as soon as it is posted (please see my video at https://youtu.be/QPyOaQUYqUs). Please could you fix this for me.

Thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter.

Regards,
Lola Heavey
https://www.facebook.com/networkforchurchmonitoring/

UPDATE 19 June (continued): We now have an international list of 121 Honorary Associates, including two Nobel Prize winners. Since Facebook's 16th block against our Church and State website last October, 91 distinguished scholars (in April, 22 academics) have given us permission to add their names to the list. Nonetheless, the blocks on public access to our Church and State website continue unabated. I have updated my blog post of 16 January with yesterday's 505th block on public access to our Church and State website since 26 July 2016. The blog post also not only reveals a record-breaking 52 such blocks in one week at the end of April (an unprecedented escalation that kicked off with our focus on Denmark's cartoon crisis; 94 blocks last month), but it reveals the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site which continues to this day. For example, as I point out in my earlier blog post about the almost certain loss of our employment contracts to the United States by Royal Mail (as opposed to the United States Postal Service), the second article below has 1/2 million Facebook likes/shares (not zero):

UPDATE 19 June (continued): And it's not just Facebook blocks, blocks on public access to our Church and State website and the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site that we are dealing with these days. We have also been dealing with Internet cuts since 26 May. I have updated my blog post of 27 May in respect of the 18th internet cut on 16 June. Before the first internet cut on 26 May, we had not previously been disconnected from the internet since our contract with British Telecom commenced on 28 May 2014.*

1st 26 May 2017, 1.39pm
2nd 27 May 2017, 12.32pm
3rd 3 June 2017, 8.45pm
4th 4 June 2017, 11.49am
5th 4 June 2017, 1.32pm (1st 2nd cut)
6th 9 June 2017, 10.50pm
7th 13 June 2017, 9.48am
8th 13 June 2017, 12.48pm
9th 15 June 2017, 6.50am
10th 15 June 2017, 8.01pm
11th 15 June 2017, 9.48pm
12th 15 June 2017, 10.18pm
13th 15 June 2017, 11.02pm (1st 5th cut)
14th 16 June 2017, 12.22am
15th 16 June 2017, 7.22pm
16th 16 June 2017, 8.02pm
17th 16 June 2017, 10.49pm
18th 16 June 2017, 11.32pm (2nd 5th cut)

No internet cuts for the last two days;
no cuts since midnight today (as of 8.05am).

* I have filed these first internet cuts since May 2014 in a folder I created on 27 May just past called "BT Internet Cuts", with the date and time part of the graphic for each cut. We pay BT £65.53 per month (£786.36 per year) for BT Infinity fibre optic broadband.

From My Picks:

20 February: The Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Greater London Authority-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

'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

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

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Facebook's 20th block against our Church and State website since 1 December 2015 (WITH UPDATE 19/6/2017)

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