If the Mobs on Twitter and Facebook Want to Persecute Someone, Why Don’t They Choose a Deserving Case?
For instance, what about Professor Finbar O’Callaghan, who has prevented children having access to cannabis medicine for epilepsy while making his living running £ multi-million clinical trials of pharmaceutical drugs?
These are the sort of people who should be hunted down and villified, not some weird eccentric who is a behind the scenes political adviser making private decisions about his own family.
Facebook Moderation and Censorship AKA ‘Community Standards’ Going Haywire
It may be automated systems going wrong or it may be another misguided crackdown on legitimate
posts but as usual with Facebook it’s impossible to get any answers, explanation or guidance.
The CLEAR team has run a Facebook page now for 10 years. According to Facebook data it’s the second most ‘liked’ page on cannabis and drugs policy and its ‘engagement’ is usually in the top three of all similar pages worldwide.
We’ve experienced everything crazy that Facebook has thrown us over those 10 years. But in the past few weeks the inexplicable and quite ridiculous censorship has reached new levels.
Over the years, our page has been hijacked three or four times by breaches in Facebook’s (not CLEAR’s) security. On each occasion it has taken up to a month to regain control which has involved endless unanswered messages and emails. Most recently Facebook has required notarised statements and evidence to restore control to our admins even though they have 10 years history on record. On one occasion, whilst the page was out of our control, Facebook took no notice at all of a stream of hardcore porn videos that were posted day after day.
Facebook’s attitude to cannabis and drugs policy is wildly inconsistent. It goes through periods of not taking any notice at all to what’s happening at present, which is where even the most innocuous mentions get sanctioned. Even links to academic, scientific and medical papers or research get removed on the basis that they are ‘promoting drug use’ or even more absurd, ‘selling drugs’.
Today, it has removed one post in which Lisa Quarrell has been told that the NHS will not pay for her son’s medicinal cannabis because she had previously ‘gone private’ to obtain it and it would be an ‘improper use of NHS funds’. It has also removed a post about a designer who has been ordered to pay Starbucks $500,000 because he designed a bong that looks like a Starbucks coffee cup.
Peter Reynolds was recently blocked from posting, first for three days and then for seven days for posting a meme inviting subscriptions to our email newsletter, the CLEAR Daily News. This, apparently, is ‘selling drugs’. We’ve been posting exactly the same meme regularly for over two years with no problem at all.
What’s really worrying is that two long online ‘chats’ with Facebook concierge support (available to advertisers) achieved nothing except for mindless repetition that the post ‘goes against community standards’. These are real people constrained to the role and inteligence of a bot, unable to think or exercise any discretion.
Meanwhile the endless, lunatic, conspiracy theories on vaccines, Bill Gates, 5G, coronavirus, etc. fill up the newsfeed. Reports indicate that child porn, fraudulent scams, misuse of celebrities’ images, terrorist ideology and violence are still not under control.
Facebook is an essential tool for any business, NGO or campaign. You simply have to be on it. It’s a monopoly that is out of control. In reality it seems to have more power over governments and regulators than they have over it. It needs to be broken up. The fact that it is also Instagram and WhatsApp is a ridiculous state of affairs. How have Zuckerberg and his bots been able to get away with this? Their ‘community standards’ or at least the enforcement are clearly an abuse of US constitutional rights and that is the only jurisdiction of which they take any notice.
CLEAR has put many tens of thousands of pounds into Facebook advertising. Pages now have to pay if they want to reach their followers. Before the algorithms changed all our posts would reach thousands of people, sometimes hundreds of thousands. In the last couple of years in many instances that has gone down to single figures. All the time, money and expertise we have invested in Facebook is being wasted. We have been cheated out of it by this out-of-control, arrogant monolith. As of this week our executive committee has stopped all Facebook advertising for good. It’ll make no difference to Facebook of course, until thousands of others do the same thing but we are not going to give them any more of our members’ money.
We will continue to do our best to bring our followers the news in the face of this draconian censorship. All our posts are also on Twitter which is in many ways (not always!) a better and more adult forum but, of course, it’s very unfocused and inflexible. The minute that there is a viable alternative to Facebook, CLEAR will be off. It’s a phenomenon that has run its course. We need more intelligently managed and properly regulated online media to communicate through.
Unfit To Be Any Sort Of Of Police Officer, Let Alone a Chief Constable
This idiot, Chief Constable Nick Adderley, issued an implied threat that his officers would start setting up roadblocks and searching supermarket trollies to see whether items purchased were necessary.
It’s clear he doesn’t understand the new legislation. In fact his suggestions are so far beyond his powers as to be ridiculous. In the present difficult circumstances, even for a senior officer who should know better, we should allow some leeway. We should forgive some exaggeration or overstatement. But Adderley has gone far beyond this. He’s clearly unfit to be a police officer at any sort of rank with his ignorance and authoritarian instincts wildly out of control.
He should be sacked from his position immediately. There is no room in British policing for someone who behaves like this, whatever the circumstances.
The Trolls Attacking Boris On Social Media Are In For The Shock Of Their Lives
It’s very, very sad how our great nation has become demeaned by the arrogant, self-righteous, opinionated, know-it-all warriors of social media.
Boris is doing a brilliant job. For 15 years this country has been crying out for leadership. He rescued Brexit from the Remainers who wanted to subvert our democracy and he’ll lead us to victory over Covid19
Life Is A Rollercoaster
When you’ve been through as much shit as I have in my life, this is just another downward swoop on the rollercoaster. And let’s be honest, if there wasn’t a slight chance that you wouldn’t make it, it wouldn’t be half as much fun!
How To Win The Coronavirus War
Closing things down will not protect us. Only by developing herd immunity will we win the Coronavirus War. So we should be careful to try and slow the rate of infection and vulnerable people need to be in strict hygiene conditions.
In areas where everything is shut down, when people start mixing again the infection will just come back.
We have to accept it in a controlled fashion, then we will develop antibodies and scientists will develop vaccines against it.
I’m Voting In The Irish General Election
I am privileged to be a registered voter in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland. As a Welshman I am very happy to live alongside my Celtic brothers in County Kerry and I still have a base in Dorset on the south coast of England. I am proud to be British and although some might think in Ireland it’s a dirty word, I have never met any hostility here and it’s a fact of geography that the UK and Ireland together comprise the British Isles.
In the recent UK General Election, I voted Conservative because above all else I wanted to ‘Get Brexit Done’. On Saturday I will be voting in Ireland and I’m deciding who to vote for.
I am a passionate Brexiteer because I consider self-determination to outweigh almost all other political considerations. In June 2008, Ireland voted against the EU over the Lisbon Treaty but it was forced by the Eurocrats to hold a second referendum and just over a year later the Irish people were bullied into submission. I wish that Ireland could have left the EU alongside the UK and there is a significant level of opinion here in favour of ‘Irexit’. It would certainly have solved the problem that Brexit has caused for the border with the North.
The other solution to the border is a united Ireland and that is something I strongly support. It’s only in the past 10 years that I have come to understand Irish history and Britain is shamed by its record of brutal oppression. I realise now that this important history is excluded from the school syllabus in the UK. Our behaviour in Ireland is one of the most dreadful episodes of history and the British were guilty of war crimes similar to Israel’s current conduct in Palestine, the Nazis in World War II and other tyrannical regimes. If I had lived in Ireland in the 20th Century I would certainly have joined the IRA. It was a righteous and noble cause.
I know for certain that I will not vote for Fine Gael, the present party of government. While I admire the way that it has helped Ireland become a progressive society, escaping from the evil of the Catholic Church, it describes itself as ‘the party of Europe’ and Leo Varadkar, its leader and the present Taoiseach is a gay, Asian version of Tony Blair. I hasten to add that I have nothing against him for being gay or Asian!
I am more naturally drawn to Fianna Fail, the main opposition party that is more Ireland-centric and republican in its philosophy. But it is very old-fashioned, embedded in the past, illiberal culture and offers little promise for the future. It strikes me that like the two main parties in the UK, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are content with the status quo where power switches back and forth between them periodically. There’s no doubt that Ireland is ready for a change.
Ireland has a history of electing significant numbers of independent politicians and here in Kerry we are blessed with our very own independent dynasty, the Healy-Raes, an extraordinary family which can, most certainly, be described as eccentric. We have a proportional, single-transferable vote system where voters specify candidates in order of preference by writing 1, 2, 3, etc. alongside their names. Michael Healy-Rae will definitely be near the top of my choices.
But voting for independents will not help create a new government that can move beyond the tired politics of the past. Extraordinarily, I find myself tempted by two socialist parties: Sinn Fein and People Before Profit. Sinn Fein for its noble ideals and ambition for a united Ireland. (The name translates as ‘We Ourselves’). People Before Profit because I have met several of its TDs and it is strongly committed to cannabis law reform.
Also, as all democrats should be, I am disgusted by the way Fine Gael and Fianna Fail treat Sinn Fein, currently ahead of both them in the polls. They both refuse to engage at all and say they would never work with it in government. The reason given is because of Sinn Fein’s past paramilitary connections and, as they say, that is has never properly distanced itself from violence.
I say this is preposterous, dishonest nonsense. Firstly, it was a just war. Of course, I deplore violence against innocent civilians but given the perspective I have recently acquired, I am ambivalent about action against security forces. An army of occupation must expect to meet resistance. If Fine Gael and Fianna Fail refuse to engage with a party with such massive popular support, they must reap the consequences. How is any movement supposed to progress beyond violence to peaceful politics if it is spurned and isolated?
For me, one of the most extraordinary experiences since moving to Ireland was meeting Martin Ferris, a Sinn Fein, Kerry TD who is retiring at this election. He was a hunger striker and starved himself for longer than some who died as a result of their protest. In the late 70s, I was in my early 20s and I remember that my perspective on the hunger strikers was that they were fools because the British government would never give in. But now I see it very differently. I see the huge courage and nobility in their protest.
So I shall be voting for Sinn Fein. I’m not yet sure what number I shall put against their candidate, Pa Daly’s name but it could well be number one. Were People Before Profit fielding a candidate in Kerry, they too woud get a vote. The elegance of the Irish voting system is that I can offer support to these socialist parties without fear. The first past the post system in Britain really does hold us back and I hope there will be electoral reform in my lifetime.
My father would turn in his grave if he read these words. I am surprised at myself but my mind is made up. Of course I am only one voter amongst more than three million but I am excited about this, my first Irish election, as I believe it heralds real change.
Happy Brexit Day!
