Almost all the images posted in this blog post had to be transferred to an alternative host website for rectification. In MediaFire, a lot of the images in this Church and State blog have still not been restored to their true size. We had before MediaFire images deleted and exchanged but the extent of this amplification is new to us. I will be writing to them about this in due course.
I wish to sign on as an honorary associate of church and state.
A Nobel Laureate this year
Our Church and State website has no less than 61 Nobel Laureates on it despite the never-ending assault on our email; see paragraph 2 under “Church and State” on this blog’s sidebar (updated today).
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms formulates what is the core of free speech. “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression.” In an important interpretation of this article, the European Court of Human Rights in Handyside v. UK (1976) indicated that this “freedom of expression” should be construed as follows. It “is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received, or regarded as inoffensive, or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population”. Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no “democratic society” (see Cliteur, 2010).
Have all nine of Declan’s emails today relating to brain-computer interfaces been blocked? This blog post will be updated with Mailtrack’s Daily Report tomorrow morning. Every email we send is personalised and tailored to the individual. For privacy reasons, the name has been removed from this email to an award-winning cognitive scientist specialising in brain-computer interfaces:
19 April 2021
Dear [name withheld],
My wife and I run a website in London called Church and State at churchandstate.org.uk.
As well as prominent cognitive scientists, there are no less than 61 Nobel Prize laureates on the site, 19 of whom are listed as Honorary Associates. Our 298 associates also include four U.S. National Medal of Technology and Innovation laureates, 13 U.S. National Medal of Science laureates, five Turing Award laureates, three Rumelhart Prize laureates, and 12 knighted professors. Nonetheless, we are currently engaged in a life and death struggle for survival (my wife’s blog post about this is here). We have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook and despite the company’s unfair practices. About 70% of our hits are from Americans.
We are a nonprofit, called Network for Church Monitoring, that works toward supporting secular governments and the separation of church and state. We recognise that some religious people cannot refrain from trying to use government to impose their beliefs on everyone and believe that a lack of separation is detrimental to scientific progress. We deal with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism (incl. brain-computer interfaces), atheism, and free speech. Please may I add your name to our list of Honorary Associates? There are no obligations with this whatsoever.
Network for Church Monitoring welcomes support from all of those who share its general objectives and goals, without concern for agreement on each and every aim. Our Honorary Associates do not therefore necessarily endorse every position advocated by us, but endorse our efforts to expose the public to the scientific perspective on crucial issues of public policy. (http://churchandstate.org.uk/honorary-associates/)
Thank you in advance for your consideration of this invitation.
Sincerely,
Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring
http://churchandstate.org.uk/about/
For months we experienced an almost total blockade of our emails to prominent space advocates anywhere in the world (only the latest targeted group). That blockade extended to an offer of financial help to us personally the week before Christmas 2020. We continue to have problems sending and receiving emails and op-eds when it comes to a close colleague in Washington, DC. Declan’s use of his mobile phone to try to get my permission emails through to prominent space advocates has also proven unsuccessful. On both recent occasions the leading expert could only be reached through voice mail. When it comes to space travel, we most recently had the honour of listing a Hall of Famer astronaut among our Honorary Associates. It was one of the few emails that we have gotten through to prominent space advocates since last September. (A distinction is made here between a prominent space advocate and someone who has written an article about space travel. I do get some permission emails through to space writers, but regrettably not very many and only occasionally.)
I am truly appalled by the unlawful violation of the Heavey’s basic right to send and receive email without interference. I would be most grateful for anything you may be able to do by way of taking measures to correct this gross abuse.
An American professor to then Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone in 2010
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has carefully considered your complaint and Human Rights Act claim, and has concluded that it is obviously unsustainable, and thus falls within the provisions of Rule 13(3)(a) of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal Rules 2000, such that, pursuant to s67(4) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Tribunal has resolved to dismiss the claim.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal was created in October 2000 by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and given the power to investigate any complaints against the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), MI5 or MI6, as well as complaints about surveillance operations mounted by the police or any other public bodies. The Guardian reported in 2014 that the tribunal, which claims to be completely independent of the UK Government, is secretly operating from a base within the Home Office, by which it is funded. The newspaper found that the IPT had investigated about 1,500 complaints and upheld only 10, five of which concerned members of one family who had all lodged complaints about surveillance by their local council. No complaint against any of the intelligence agencies had ever been upheld. The discovery that the IPT is lodged within a Whitehall department has fuelled criticisms of the tribunal that has been levelled by rights groups, lawyers and complainants. The IPT’s critics complain that the secrecy is excessive and that its procedures are stacked so heavily in favour of the government and against complainants that it is fundamentally unfair. According to The Guardian, some senior lawyers have described the IPT as “Kafkaesque”, while one eminent barrister dismissed it as a “kangaroo court”. The newspaper also reveals that because of the perception that the tribunal is unfair, many would-be complainants spurn it.
'Independent' court scrutinising MI5 is located inside Home Office http://t.co/ZezpDipCPx via @guardian
— Ian Cobain (@IanCobain) March 5, 2014
UPDATE 27 April (5.16pm): Within minutes of posting this bog post on 19 April at 11.56pm, we were cut off the internet the next morning! This was the related Mailtrack Daily Report later that morning:
One of these 10 unread emails was our reply email to a close colleague in Washington, DC.
Mailtrack Daily Reports
Your email was indeed blocked as “junk”. You may use my name as an honorary associate.
A Nobel Laureate in 2007, after one of many telephone conversations Declan has had to try to get emails through.
All ten of these unread emails were to Nobel Laureates.
Our Average Daily Best for years has been 30-40% read.
1. 19/04: 10 emails sent, 0 read; 0% read.
2. 20/04: 12 emails sent, 4 read; 33% read.
3. 21/04: 13 emails sent, 2 read; 15% read.
4. 22/04: 10 emails sent, 2 read; 20% read.
5. 23/04: 10 emails sent, 0 read; 0% read.
6. 24/04: 15 emails sent, 2 read; 13% read.
7. 25/04: 15 emails sent, 1 read; 7% read.
8. 26/04: 12 emails sent, 3 read; 25% read.
Average Best: 13% read; 97 emails sent, 14 read.
Only 2 emails read following a daily report.
For three days in a row, commencing on 19 April, Declan was unable to track previously sent emails. On 20 April we found four such emails binned. We have had massive amounts of draft documents deleted in the past, but, to the best of our knowledge, this deletion of sent emails is unprecedented. We have had already in place systems to weather any extent of this latest assault on our email.
Beware the use of "free" photos off the internet – they may not be as free as you think, thanks to automated image recognition tools and dubious use of Creative Commons licensing- as targets of one German photographer found out to their cost: https://t.co/64ryecBz1v
— ComputerWeekly (@ComputerWeekly) November 18, 2020
Laptop interference: These past 13 weeks it’s been cuts to the targeted laptop from the internet and speeds as low as 0.11 Mbps (download) and 0.04 Mbps (upload). One of Declan’s laptops was cut from the internet yesterday. The other laptop functioning at 1 Mbps today.
The targeting of one or more of our four operational laptops kicked off again in December 2020. It’s either cut the targeted laptop(s) from the internet (once yesterday) or slow down speeds to anything from 74 Mbps to a fraction of 1 Mbps.[1] For four weeks it was an average 5 Mbps on Declan’s primary laptop until 26 March, when it was 71 Mbps, the first time over 70 Mbps since last December (1 Mbps today). With his secondary laptop, it was an average 20 Mbps for three weeks until 26 March, when it was 61 Mbps, one of the few times over 60 Mbps since last December (61 Mbps today). Seldom have two laptops been treated the same way at any one time, unless we have been cut off the internet altogether for anything up to 7 days to date. This month is a record-breaking fifth consecutive month for this sustained targeting of one or more of our laptops. (Tuesday 6 April was the second day since last December that Declan had two laptops functioning above 50 Mbps, and last Sunday was the second day within the same period of time that his primary laptop was back to the usual normal of 73 Mbps.)
__________________________
[1] The sustained cutting of Declan’s secondary laptop from the internet continued throughout the morning of 2 April (nine cuts in total) as he updated with two laptops the Futurism section of our Church and State website for Rumelhart Prize laureates. The following week we had the honour of listing a third Rumelhart Prize laureate as an Honorary Associate. The Rumelhart Prize was founded in 2001 to introduce the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for cognitive science.
TV interference: 21 days these past 13 weeks it’s been 0% Signal Quality and that includes the last two days in a row and a previous three days in a row for two weeks running (then it’s been particular free view channels that are unwatchable, this week included)
2 January: We have once again lost all free view channels using our second BT TV YouView box (day 4). This time it’s on an on-off basis and by far more off than on. Four cuts during this period on what’s left on HDMI input without these channels. We have had three BT engineers in our flat to date to no avail. No equipment, phone line or aerial fault detected. When we switch from HDMI to Antenna, we have always had and continue to have perfect reception on free view channels using our aerial.
From My Picks:
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan
Our list of 300 Honorary Associates includes 20 Nobel Prize laureates, 18 US National Medal laureates and 12 knighted professors notwithstanding the excessive targeting of these categories of emails in particular. (Today Declan had the honour of adding the 20th Nobel laureate to the list, having had an average of 85% of his emails blocked for over a week.)
http://churchandstate.org.uk/honorary-associates/
“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 (1930-2020), (then) President, Americans for Religious Liberty
