Dr. Coldwell Banned from FB for Support of Trump – Lets [sic] Sue FB!
...screamed the big headline.As usual, Coldwell's claims make no sense at all. Look at it logically, though to do so you have to overlook the fact that logic and Lenny don't even belong in the same blog post together. If people got suspended from Facebook merely for writing supportive posts about Trump, there would be no pro-Drumpf content on Facebook whatsoever. But my feeds are constantly cluttered with users' posts supporting The Donald's presidential run (I do have Facebook friends who are Trump supporters), as well as links to "news" and opinion pieces that are favorable to the orange blowfish. And there are scads of Facebook pages and communities devoted to supporting Trump's presidency.
Nevertheless Lenny is crying martyr again, and not surprisingly is once again waving the litigation banner, inviting his idiot followers to join him in a one-billion-dollar class action lawsuit.
Said he:
Dr. Coldwell Re-Posted on FB a post in regard to the fact that Trump is not a Muslim Hater.
He was shortly after banned for his actions despite the fact that we, as Americans, still have free speech under the second [sic] amendment.
It is time to start a Class A Lawsuit against Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg. He believes his corporate policies are binding for the Facebook user without any form of justice or way to question their unlawful actions. There is no method set up to defend a post and reverse their unlawful and criminal Actions.
Law is not a one-way street. Since Facebook profits from our posts and participation, we have the right to sue for a part of that money and as freelancers. Simply put, we have rights, possibly employee rights. We have the right to get our regular hourly rate if Facebook does not obey and adhere to their own policies and rules.Let's take a closer look at this matter.
First...Second... one of those numbers... the point is, we love Trump!
To begin with, it is the First Amendment that addresses free speech, not the Second Amendment, and you would think that the guy who describes himself as "one of the leading authorities for Constitutional Law (Common Law ) Sovereignty and the fight for Liberty and Freedom" -- and who is co-author of the best book ever written about the subject would know his First from his Second Amendments. (By the way, as mentioned here a few times previously, Coldwell's co-author on that great law book, "Dr. Sam Kennedy," is currently serving prison time for tax evasion).
My husband Ron attempted to set little Lenny straight.
Nice try, Ron, but I doubt that your comment will ever see the light of day. Except here.
On a Facebook discussion about the matter, Ron added, "And BTW, Herr Genius, before you can claim to have rights as an employee or freelancer, you must first have an employment or work-for-hire contract. Feel free to post evidence that you have either. We'll wait."
I suspect we will have a long wait. I do have a feeling that eventually LoonyC or one of his admins [I originally speculated it would be Sarah, but she seems clueless or indifferent about it at the moment] will realize the mistake about the amendment, most likely as a result of reading Ron's comment, and will silently correct it, hoping no one else noticed. But look, I have a screen shot (as usual, click to enlarge).
And here's the rest of the little screed.
The amendment gaffe was proudly paraded on Facebook as well, also on May 25, on The Only Answer to Cancer page, which is one of numerous pages Coldwell maintains and from which he has not been suspended. (Which makes his whining seem all the more... whiny.) His favorite admin and "little sister" Sarah provided a supportive comment without making note of the First/Second confusion.
Now, I suppose this whole thing could be viewed as a Second Amendment issue if you stretched the definition a little and framed it as a case of Lenny being deprived of an opportunity to "shoot off" his mouth. But clearly this was an error on the part of Lenny and/or his admin(s), and it hasn't been corrected yet as of this writing.
For the benefit of Lenny and Sarah and anyone else who may be reading this: here is a very basic summary of both the First and the Second Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America. Be sure to take scrupulous notes so you can work the information into your presentations about sovereignty and freedom and Constitutional law at the next IBMS Masters Society (GIN ripoff club) meeting... or are you not having those in the USA any more? That club was doomed from the beginning, though the death knell really seemed to be ringing back in December 2014 when Peter Wink apparently left the party... but I digress.
Regarding amendments, your idol Donald Trump is indeed a supporter of Second Amendment rights, or at least he comes across that way, though your ignorance about amendments and numerous other subjects might endear you to the man who says that he "loves the poorly educated." But what about the First Amendment, which -- not to belabor the point -- is the relevant one in this instance? Donald Trump is clearly no friend to freedom of the press, at least when it comes to content that is critical of him. In that regard, he's much like... well, you know.
Not to belabor the point, of course.
Is Coldwell telling the truth (stop snickering) about the Facebook suspension?
Is there any truth to Lenny's claim? Did he really get suspended (not banned, but suspended) from Facebook simply for saying that Donald Trump is not anti-Muslim? In light of the fact that there are hundreds of much more passionately pro-Trump (and stupider, more toxic anti-Muslim rants) on Facebook -- and that all of these are allowed to remain unmolested by that criminal Zuckerberg -- I think we can safely assume that Lenny is not telling us the entire truth, to put it very kindly.
Here is a May 21, 2016 screen shot that appears to show a part of the story Lenny didn't tell on his blog post.
Although there is indeed a relatively innocuous (though comically misinformed) pro-Trump statement in this post, that statement appears to have been written by someone else, judging by the fact that everything is spelled, capitalized and punctuated by someone much more literate in written English than Lenny is. But look at the clearly anti-Semitic comment about that statement by "Dr. Leonard Coldwell" (the name he uses on his German-language Facebook page):
How the Jews run the world -- lets [sic] see is [sic] Zuckerass blocks me now too in that case.On his German page on the same day, "Dr." Leonard Coldwell posted essentially the same complaint.
I simply do not have the ability to trace the entire history of the posts on both the English and German pages, but I think the above screen shots give enough of a clue. If Facebook did indeed remove a post of Coldwell's because "it doesn't follow the Facebook Community Standards," you can be pretty sure that there was some anti-Jewish or other hate-filled screed (possibly a toxic anti-Muslim screed that he's not showing us) attached to that non-Coldwellian #TRUMP2016 post. You can also be pretty sure that the removal happened because someone reported Loony for the hatement, not for being a Trump supporter.
Moreover, if you look at the screen shots that Coldwell shared on his May 25 "blog" post, it appears that all of the controversy centers around content on his German ("Dr. Coldwell") page, and as noted, he hasn't been suspended from that page. He's still posting, as anyone who has Facebook access can see by clicking on this very public page. But the tone of his challenge to "Zuckerass" ("Lets [sic] see is [sic] Zuckerass blocks me now too") makes it appear that he actually wanted to be blocked/suspended, just so he could have another opportunity to whine. Also worth noting is that if the offending post was originally published on his German page, this would make arguments about the First (and Second) Amendments all the more irrelevant.
Now, if Lenny would be willing to share a screen shot of his complete original post-- and the entire message from Facebook about it for that matter -- perhaps it would tell us a different story. Otherwise we can just assume that he is lying as usual. I know, I am as shocked as you are.
Threatened ass-action flawsuits and Lenny's history of Facebook abuse
I seriously doubt that Zuck is quaking in his boots about the prospect of being fake-sued by Lenny, who has fashioned a third or fourth career as a vexatious -- and unsuccessful -- litigant.
I also question the Len-sinuation that Zuck and Facebook are making tons of money from Lenny's poorly spelled, semi-literate, conspiracy-meme-filled and often hateful rants on his numerous Facebook pages.
Coldwell has often promoted himself as one of the few sources of valuable information that can't be found anywhere else; therefore, according to him, every time he gets blocked or banned or suspended, people who could benefit from his valuable info are being criminally deprived. Oh, the humanity!
But does anyone really benefit from (and does anyone in the sane world really miss) moronic posts such as this one (posted a few days before the Great Ban), in which Loony says that HAARP is killing us with volcanoes?
Hey, I know another guy who had a great volcano tale too.
Incidentally, the article that Coldwell's post linked to said nothing about HAARP (which was shut down in 2013). That was Coldwell's spin. If you really want to know about the possible causes of increased volcanic activity worldwide, there is plenty of legitimate information and informed speculation on the Web.
Granted, the volcano post isn't hate speech; it's just stupid speech, and is merely one random example of the lunacy he likes to share when he isn't spewing hatred all over his Facebooks. But getting back to the subject of hate speech, I seriously doubt that many people (except for a few cretins) miss, or that Zuck is making millions off of, Lenny's unhealthy obsession with trans-genitals:
As many if not most of you know, Leonard Coldwell has a long history of writing abusive and hate-speechy posts on Facebook. Here's one of the abusive posts (personally abusive to me, that is) from October 2014. I reported this one to Facebook, even though I had not reported dozens of other abusive and defamatory posts he had written about me. Since this one had my home address and phone number I felt it endangered me. Facebook did remove this one and of course Coldwell complained about being censored, as usual.
Here are another couple of posts, from the same time period, which he posted on his friend Abe Husein's page, but which Abe later removed after I brought them to his attention. I have mentioned, displayed and linked to these several times previously, of course, and ask those of you who have seen it all before to forgive the redundancy. But this is for the benefit of new readers. It's good to have all of the essential information in one place.
And if you want to complain about "aristocracy like kingdoms, declaring rules and cutting people off at the knees when opinions do not match up" (in the words of Sarah the Creative on the aforementioned May 25 Facebook post), what about Coldwell's refusal to allow dissent on his own forums, and his decision to completely block people like me from participating on all of his many Facebook pages (and blocking me completely from even seeing his main page) -- while he freely used Facebook to publish my home address and cell phone number along with foul false accusations that I had killed his dog and was sexually harassing him?
I wasn't allowed to speak up in my own defense, and anyone else who tried was promptly blocked and accused of being me under a fake name. I had to fight Facebook to get the worst of the posts removed, but some remain up to this very day, searchable on Google. When LoonyC failed at his attempts to shut me up by discrediting me and encouraging some of his rabid followers to get in touch with me, he tried to sue me (and a few others who had criticized him) into silence. We saw how that worked out.
So don't bawl about "cutting people off at the knees when opinions do not match up." Leonard Coldwell is one of the worst offenders in that regard.
UK wag Longdog has written a few blog posts about some of Lenny's past Facebook suspensions, such as this one in January of this year. That time around, Lenny claimed he'd been locked out because of his posts about Obama. Longdog pointed out that the real reason was that Lenny was constantly posting "racist shite" like this.
The January suspension followed a long string of hateful posts, over the previous few weeks, some of which Longdog documented in this December 2015 post. Longdog posted several screenshots of Lenny's spittle about Muslims and the "Negro," President Obama -- shots that clearly displayed Lenny's racism, bigotry and xenophobia. Then for good measure Longdog posted a shot of one of the complaints about me that Lenny made in his failed 2015 lawsuit against Salty Droid, RationalWiki, me, and a few other parties and web sites. The main complaint against me was that I had written posts accusing Lenny of engaging in hate speech. No irony intended there, either.
By the time Lenny was allowed back on Facebook after that suspension, he'd changed his story about the reason for the suspension, as documented again by Longdog. This time (and not for the first time), Coldwell blamed Facebook for writing posts on his page and then blocking him for those posts that they had planted.
"My Staff and I will start making new Posts here for a while but we will eventually supporting FB. FB made Posts that I did not make and blocked me because of their on Posts on my Site here. I deleted some of my FB Pages already but they are still there. Since they will block me soon again please write to..."Bernie at the GINtruth blog also wrote about this matter in January 2016, sharing some more of Lenny's hateful and racist Facebook posts. The entire GINtruth post is not about Coldwell but a substantial part of it is. And it is noteworthy that Bernie included a link to an article about Facebook's announcement in early 2016 that it was going to take extra steps to monitor hate speech among its European users -- of which Coldwell (as "Dr. Leonard Coldwell") is emphatically one.
More recently, in the wake of attention drawn to an insidious and potentially dangerous strategy whereby Jewish writers are targeted by vicious anti-Semites and Neo-Nazis on social media, Facebook, Google and Microsoft partnered with the European Union to crack down on online hate speech, making a pledge to delete offensive comments on their respective platforms in under 24 hours. (Note: As of June 3, Google has pulled the Chrome extension called "Coincidence Detector" that had been used to target Jewish people. So it looks as if the alt-right haters will have to come up with new code to do their dirty deeds.) In any case, if Leonard Coldwell continues to write posts about the nefarious Jews and the ways they rule the world -- or to make snide remarks about "the Negro" Obama or blacks in general or Muslims -- he can expect to be reported for those posts, and most likely to be suspended yet again.
I want to make it clear, as I have previously, that I have never reported Coldwell for hate speech on any social media platform. I have only reported him to Facebook for those posts that endangered me by posting my home address, and for writing posts accusing my friend Bernie O'Mahony of being a child rapist. And whether you agree or disagree with the policies or actions or the intent behind monitoring and removing hate speech -- and as I've said numerous times, for the most part I lean towards granting haters, including Coldwell, the right to spew -- this is not a matter of Facebook or the New World Order or the pro-Obama or anti-Trump forces or Big Pharma or anyone else targeting one little mustachioed madman. Rather it is a matter of Facebook policy, applied to everyone, in keeping with the platform's efforts to minimize hate speech.
Going back further in time: In a January 2015 blog post, Bernie wrote about Coldwell's social media and Internet martyrdom. And going even further back: In this February 2013 post Bernie wrote about the same issue, this time focusing on Coldwell's propensity for confusing spam with hacking.
Though Coldwell's claims about being "hacked" are for the most part bunk, he has been suspended from Facebook numerous times over the years -- thrown into "Facebook jail," as it's sometimes called. And every time it has happened he has made up some excuse about the reason: Facebook is censoring him for telling "the truth" about natural cures for cancer and other diseases; Facebook is trying to shut him up because they are part of some big criminal cartel that has it out for Lenny; Facebook doesn't like what he says about Obama; Facebook is banning him because he supports Trump. Or in some cases, Facebook is in cahoots with "criminal" bloggers who are being paid by Big Pharma to ruin "Dr." C's reputation.
But anyone with the ability to see Coldwell's actual Facebook posts, either on his pages or through some of those "criminal" blogs, knows better.
Lenny uncorks another bottle of whine
The day after publishing his fib about being banned from Facebook for supporting Trump, Lenny was back in curation mode, copying and pasting a lament from Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams' Natural News site about how Facebook has it out for conservatives and alt-health heroes. Here is the link to the original rant on the Natural News site; note that the article was not written by Adams himself, but clearly it is consistent with his line of propaganda.
The Natural News whine was apparently in response to a recent flap about allegations regarding Facebook's anti-conservative/pro-liberal bias, as reflected in the way Facebook determined "trending topics." But when I read about Facebook's response to the allegations, it appeared to me that Facebook didn't list something as "trending" until it was mentioned in one or more sites on a list of mainstream or major media -- and there were several conservative sites on that list. Accordingly it appears that if there was any bias, Facebook was simply more biased in favor of mainstream media over "alternative" media, rather than liberal over conservative. And that is not at all the same thing as an anti-conservative or pro-liberal bias.
In any case, in an extravagant effort to equalize the platform (or kowtow to conservative whiners with a persecution complex, as the case may be), Facebook announced changes in its policies in order to make sure that conservatives have their say. And following the initial allegations, Zuck himself had reached out to the cons.
But here's some perspective on the larger issue, written by Clay Calvert, the director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida.
Do we really want or need social networks telling us what is important and what is trending? The very notion of “trending” itself is troublesome, as it reflects much larger problems with news delivery in this country. It mirrors, albeit on much more rapid timetable, the short news attention span we have and the exceedingly quick news cycles cable channels provide in an effort to keep eyeballs. An issue arises, it garners attention and then it rapidly fades away…Me? I rarely click on the "trending topics" either on Facebook or Twitter. But the gist of Calvert's message was this:
… We need to acknowledge that bias – be it by man or machine – is inherent in news and, finally, we must seek out as many different and diverse sources as possible to learn what’s going on in the world and to find out what truly matters to us, not to a news curator or an algorithm.Exactly.
Of course if you don't like the new improved Facebook or any of the other "news" or information sources, you can always turn to Mike Adams' alternative and totally objective resources, mentioned in this recent Whirled post (see under, "Trying to conquer the Internet, one comical alt-site at a time"). Or you can just hold out for Adams' stale reruns on "Dr." C's "blog."
Zuck is the guy everyone loves to hate
Coldwell's constant whining about Facebook and his screeds against Mark Zuckerberg are so amusing because clearly, Facebook is very, very important to him. But he seems to be operating under the delusion that Facebook participation is an absolute birthright, not a privilege, and that the rules and guidelines and terms that are clearly spelled out for all participants simply do not apply to him. Instead of using Facebook merely to connect with others and promote his businesses, he continually does the online equivalent of accepting an invitation to a party and then spending the entire time trashing the host and being rude to many of the other guests. He is like the obnoxious drunk who just won't leave until he is kicked out. And he especially seems to enjoy the trashing-the-host part.
But everybody loves to hate on Mark Zuckerberg, I suppose. And many (me included) have a love-hate relationship with Facebook -- and for many reasons that's understandable. It's not just the conservatives, of course. Left-winger Peter Sunde, for instance, recently dubbed Zuck the dictator of Facebook Nation. Sunde did have a few valid points; for instance:
Sunde also decried the technology world's lack of perspective. He denounced Facebook's policy requiring people to use their real name, as in some countries, this can get people persecuted and makes it hard to organize political movements.Yep. As I and others have said, Facebook users aren't its customers; they are its product. And in that regard Facebook does make money off of all of us. But we're also all willing participants who can't participate unless we agree to Facebook's Terms of Use. So Lenny's half-cocked (heh, heh) plan to sue Zuckerberg for a billion bucks is just more lunatic rambling.
"Mark Zuckerberg is a rich white dude from a really privileged background," Sunde said, explaining why he thinks the Facebook boss doesn't understand cultural differences.
"The reason for the real name policy is Mark Zuckerberg wants to make another dollar."
In any case Lenny Coldwell has little to worry about regarding Facebook's real-name policy, or regarding any suspensions, for that matter. He has lots of Facebook pages, even apart from the "Dr." Leonard Coldwell mostly-German page, and the Only Answer to Cancer page. He just created another on May 27, 2016, using the name "Eyn Rand" (he is a worshiper of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, although I seriously doubt that he has ever actually read that weighty tome. But clearly he loves what other people say is in it.).
In the screen grab below, notice the post from Amy King (real name Amy Lynn Chappell, Coldwell's current "wife"), whose account is one of the ones Lenny is apparently using at the moment to continue to have access to Facebook. You can tell it is Lenny writing because Amy is more literate than the writer of that post. I mean, c'mon... "Dr. C is feed up with F B." Amy can do better than that; she may have atrocious taste in men, but she seems reasonably literate. In reality she hasn't been actively participating on her own page in many months, leading some to wonder what actually happened to her. Maybe Lenny has her chained in the second kitchen at that big lake house he fake-bought in South Carolina, baking her Million Dollar Muffin. She had better finish her baking and they'd best skedaddle before the real owners of that house find out they're there, or the real renters get back from their vacation.
A subsequent visit, though, showed that he had managed to amass a mighty half dozen "friends," including the very "Leonard Coldwell" who is supposedly suspended at the moment. (How does that happen? To become friends with someone on Facebook, one person has to request and the other person has to accept, right? So how could "Leonard Coldwell" accept a friend request from one of his own fake accounts if he is locked out of one of the real account that he is whining about being locked out of?)
Anyway, clearly Eyn wants friends. So do him a favor, as the NOT-suspended "Dr. Leonard Coldwell" suggests to englisch (sic) speakers...
...and go friend him. Then maybe you can share your thoughts on his page. That is, if he allows others to participate.
And the "banned" preys on
Make no mistake about it: frequently being thrown into Facebook jail has been a marketing boon for Leonard Coldwell, who has placed himself at the center of a decades-long fake persecution drama that probably began long before Mark Zuckerberg was even born.
Every time Coldwell gets suspended from Facebook, or is even threatened with suspension, or every time one of his social media pages or web sites or email addresses gets hit by spamming or phishing or just some random technical glitch, he goes into full martyr mode. Hamhandedly employing fake-scarcity and forbidden-knowledge persuasion tactics (although I must say that his ex b.f.f. Kevin Trudeau was ever so much more refined and skillful at these), Coldwell whines that he is on the verge of being blocked and banned because of his truth-tellin', and that the only way you can possibly save yourself from being deprived of his life-saving information is to subscribe to his "newsletter."
And voila! He gets a few more names to add to his sucker list. No doubt he has many thousands of names on his list by now, and this fact is most likely the basis of one of his recent boasts that his IBMS Masters Society, which costs money you'll never get back to actually join, has 26,000-plus "members" from 151 countries.
All that Coldwell's "newsletter" consists of are email notices about his "blog posts," nearly all of which are nothing more than curated content that mostly comes from conspiracy-monger sites like those of Mike Adams and Alex Jones. Coldwell truly has nothing original or ground-breaking or earth-shattering to offer. Ever.
But he does get new names from every Facebook suspension incident, and new opportunities to prey upon the desperate, vulnerable and truly stupid. The Facebook community, in the US and elsewhere, gets a brief reprieve from one consistent source of stupidity, comical misinformation, lies and virulent hate posts. And I get easy fodder for blog posts.
So I guess it's a win-win-win.
Update 30 May 2016: When I tried to follow the link to Coldwell's main site today, I was met with this message:
Warning: require(/homepages/14/d375068991/htdocs/drleonardcoldwell/wp-includes/category.php): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /homepages/14/d375068991/htdocs/drleonardcoldwell/wp-settings.php on line 150
Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required '/homepages/14/d375068991/htdocs/drleonardcoldwell/wp-includes/category.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php5.5') in /homepages/14/d375068991/htdocs/drleonardcoldwell/wp-settings.php on line 150
Either Lenny had one of his tech people block my IP address (perhaps my husband Ron's attempted comment to his "blog" post was the last straw, or maybe it was this Whirled post that really set his implants on edge)... or his site is down again. If the latter, I'm sure he'll blame the usual cartel of criminals who have it out for him. If the former, perhaps he is setting me up for some lame accusation that I "hacked" into his site even though I'm not allowed.
But I had been allowed, up until today anyway. And the screen shots and quotations from his web site, drleonardcoldwell dot com, were accurate at the time that Ron and I saw them. If any of y'all can get to his main site without receiving the above message, let me know, and then I'll know for sure that I am blocked from this very public site, one of the most popular sites on the Interwebz, according to him. Also let me know if he corrected that silly Second/First Amendment goof. I'm dying to know.
Update 31 May 2016: Well, it wasn't all about me after all. Several of my friends whom I asked also said they received the same error message when trying to get to Coldwell's main web site. But today the site is up and running again, and the Amendment gaffe has yet to be corrected as of this posting.
Not surprisingly, on the Dr. Leonard Coldwell (German) Facebook page, Lenny hollered about hacking. Gee, I didn't see that one coming. He's a little off on his numbers, though, as usual. His threat to sue Facebook was first posted on his "blog" on May 25. I checked the link every day after that and it worked fine. It worked when I originally published this blog post. Only on May 30 (yesterday) did I receive the error message referred to above. So I would say that this is a little longer than "2 hours." Also, how did a one billion dollar lawsuit suddenly become five billion? Or is he counting on his German readers who don't read English to take his word for it, and not to bother with trying to read the original post? Or did something just get lost in translation? Anyway, once again Lenny is crying "wolf," but he has a few idiot followers who won't bother questioning his claims.
As mentioned numerous times before on this blog and Bernie's as well as Salty Droid's, Coldwell loves to whine that his sites and Facebook accounts have been hacked. He has been whining about being hacked for years. If you need another example, in this August 2014 post I documented some of Lenny's hilarious false allegations about "criminal" bloggers, acting in concert with some "Jews in Israel," supposedly "hacking" a then-new website of his. (The entire piece isn't dedicated to this subject; the hacking-allegation story is at the beginning of the post.)
I am not completely discounting the possibility that Coldwell's sites have been hacked on occasion, though I also suspect that some if not most of the problems have been due to bungling by an insufficiently competent "technical" team. But judging by the error message I received the other day when trying to get to his main site (see above), that site is powered by Wordpress. And Wordpress sites seem to be particularly vulnerable to hacking as well as technical glitches. It has something to do with the associated database and with various plugins. I don't really understand it. But I do know that Salty Droid learned this lesson the hard way, and with the help of a technically competent person he finally fixed the problem. So maybe Lenny just needs to get someone who knows what they're doing to fix his web problems. He also needs to quit blaming everyone else for his own manic stupidity and hatefulness.
