Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion

Somewhat alarmingly, it appears that the UK news cycle and political agenda is now being set by Nadine Dorries MP. Writing in the Mail on Sunday (where else?), Dorries warns the prime minister that he will be gone by Christmas:

Despite my comments of last week, in which I described David Cameron and George Osborne as ‘two arrogant posh boys who don’t know the price of milk’, I hold nothing against ‘posh’ people… But I do have a problem with arrogance. And when arrogance combines with privilege to be the root cause of bad decisions it is not a pleasant sight.

…While Britons scream out for strong policies on law and order, a stable NHS and an in-out referendum on Europe to cut us free from basket-case Southern European economies, Cameron makes gay marriage and Lords reform his  priorities.

…According to the rules of the backbench 1922 Committee, in order for David Cameron’s position as leader to be challenged, the chairman of the committee needs to receive 46 signatures from Conservative MPs to signal a vote of no confidence. 

I would guess that those signatures are already coming in and will reach 46 by Christmas.

This complaint of “arrogance” comes from an MP who allowed her copy of the guide to MP’s expenses to fall out of her office window, and then  as a gesture of contempt posted a photograph of it lying on a nearby roof.

Dorries’ attack drips with personal animosity and her trademark viciousness (for other examples, see here and here), and perhaps marks the low-point of a deteriorating relationship. In February 2011 she wrote of “an excellent one to one meeting with the Prime Minister” at which coffee was served:  ”The code is no coffee means bad news”. However, a few days later she mysteriously closed her Twitter account; we may speculate that she had been asked to tone down her public statements to avoid whipping up unnecessary controversy, and that Dorries acquiesced.

This, though, was prior to a Parliamentary debate on abortion counselling, which took place the following September. Dorries had hoped for Conservative support for her proposed amendment, but was disappointed; James Forsyth noted the exchange at Prime Minister’s Questions which has become perhaps her most famous moment:

Dorries, irritated by how Cameron withdrew support for her abortion amendment as soon as the Lib Dems started kicking off, asked the Prime Minister when he would tell ‘the deputy Prime Minister who is boss?’ Cameron replied ‘I know the honourable lady is extremely frustrated’ at which the House descended into puerile laughter. The double entendre appeared unintentional, Cameron seemed slightly taken aback by the House’s reaction at first, but having made it he should have tried to respectfully answer her question rather than just sitting down.

Cameron subsequently sent Dorries a private apology by text message, but this would have simply further confirmed Dorries’ sense of her own self-importance. Previously, Dorries had threatened to derail John Bercow’s position as Speaker through a campaign of media attacks on his personal character (“oily opportunist”); shortly after these attacks ceased, Bercow appointed her to a prestigious advisory body called the Panel of Chairs. The lesson of this perhaps came to mind when the Prime Minister acknowledged that he had made a mistake.

Subsequent to the “frustrated” exchange came the parliamentary debate on her proposed amendment. Her moment in the spotlight did not go well; her rambling and self-regarding discourse embarrassed the amendment’s co-sponsor, Frank Field, who wearily asked, “Does the Hon. Lady accept that she might further her case if she concluded her contribution soon?” A few days later there was a further setback when it was announced that Dorries’ Parliamentary seat may disappear at the next election due to boundary changes. On the plus side, though, Dorries now enjoys extensive media attention as a rent-a-quote “outspoken MP”; hence headlines such as ”Tory MP Nadine Dorries urges reform of ‘sexist’ BBC”, and wide publicity given to a Tweet in support of a sexist beer brand in the Commons bar (that one even made it into Chinese translation). Dorries has nothing to lose by self-serving populist outbursts, and much to gain.

However, Dorries’ motives also operate at a higher level; back in 2007 she explained to the War Cry how she had been “converted through an Alpha course”:

‘… I am not an MP for any reason other than because God wants me to be. There is nothing I did that got me here; it is what God did. There is nothing amazing or special about me, I am just a conduit for God to use.’

Dorries has close links with Christian Concern, and her Twitter rhetoric increasingly echos the UK’s newly-assertive Christian Right:

Is the coalition government secretly implementing an anti-Christian agenda? And if so, who is driving it, Cameron and Osborne or the LDs? (1)

Is this the most anti Christian government in history asks @PaulGoodmanCH (2)

Farron, wears Christian badge but NEVER Supported any legislation to reduce abortion.#christianofconvenience (3)

@sunny_hundal To finish, you don’t condem people who advocate killing babies, you don’t attack Islam for executing gay men, but you do attack a Christian woman who believes in corrective therapy, which I don’t by the way. Your bigotry is priceless. (4 and 5)

Dorries discusses gay marriage in a companion article for Conservative Home:

Gay marriage is a policy which has been pursued by the metro elite gay activists and needs to be put into the same bin [as Lords Reform]. I have yet to meet a gay couple in my constituency or beyond who support it; in fact, the reaction has been quite the opposite. Great Britain and its gay couples don’t live on Canal Street in Manchester, shop in The Lanes in Brighton or socialise at Gaydar in London. Gay couples are no different from heterosexual couples and yet this policy transforms them into political agitators who have set themselves against the church and community. The policy is divisive, unpopular with the public, is tearing the Conservative Party apart and will influence absolutely no one in terms of the way they vote in the future. I won’t dwell on who got the policy into No10 in the first place; however, as I am sure the happy-in-a-civil-partnership Labour MP, Ben Bradshaw would agree, it should never have been given the time of day in the first instance.

A previous piece by Dorries on the subject was quoted by Don Feder in a press release for an upcoming Christian Concern conference on marriage.

This morning, George Osborne attempted to deflect Dorries’ news-leading outburst during an appearance on the Andrew Marr Show. The Telegraph reports:

The public were not concerned about Lord’s reform or gay marriage, explained Mr Osborne but rather they wanted the government to focus its attention on “the economy, the education system, the welfare system, the NHS (and) our police”.

This was a clever attempt to turn Dorries’ complaint back against her: Dorries writes in the Mail that “Cameron makes gay marriage and Lords reform his  priorities”, but Osborne is here saying that these are in fact Dorries’ priorities, since she is the one making an issue of them. Whether this bit of rhetorical judo will work, though, is another matter.

Dorries is not the first Tory MP to have predicted Cameron’s imminent political demise; last November Patrick Mercer (recently discussed by me here) was secretly recorded promising that Cameron would “go in the spring. He’ll resign in the spring”. Alas, Mercer didn’t go into in further details, but instead digressed onto the subject of Ukrainian women (“Ooooh ahhh. They are ­extraordinary. They ARE extraordinary”.).

Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

A Sri Lankan Buddhist has written to Pamela Geller, to express his appreciation of her anti-Islam website. Geller has published his letter:

Im from Sri Lanka. A Buddhist. Im very interested in your work against Islamic terrorism. (I mean its as a terrorism because all things in their Qur’an is terrorism. aka black book of terrorism)

…Some incident happens in here last week. Islam mosque built recently in a land or more than 800 years old Buddhist temple. The Dambulla rock caves well known around the world….

this is the most recent incident only. they did, and doing many things against us. their plan is lost Sinhalese people from Sri Lanka and become Muslim country.

…Please note some fake, incorrect news published though many international news such as BBC. these terror islamic people show this as Buddhism racist to world.

But actually they against us, our religion. we did nothing…

Geller’s response is triumphant:

More news you will never see. This is the same Sri Lanka that Rifqa Bary’s parents wanted to send her back to. And everyone in the media parroted the same thing — that Sri Lanka had no problem with Islam or its devout adherents. Reality was different: Rifqa herself, in her harrowing video explaining why she fled from her home in fear for her life, said that Muslim girls in Sri Lanka are killed or put into insane asylums for trying to leave Islam. She knew what she was talking about.

In fact, Muslims make up only 7.6 per cent of Sri Lanka’s population, and the country’s laws favour Buddhism – in 2010 a Sri Lankan convert to Islam was arrested for publishing two books about her conversion. Around that time, Geller’s associate Robert Spencer was among those incorrectly and ignorantly asserting that Sri Lanka is a Muslim country (I blogged previously on Bary here).

Of course, this does not mean that Muslim extremists do not exist in Sri Lanka, but the claim that evidence of aggressive Buddhist behaviour at Dumballa merely “fake, incorrect news” is not supportable. A Sri Lankan website called Groundviews has what appears to be comprehensive coverage of recent events in Dambulla, where militant Buddhist monks have been demanding the removal of a local mosque and kovil (a type of Tamil Hindu temple). Helpfully, the site’s articles include commentary and translation of local news reports. Here’s an extract from one piece:

...There are members of the Sangha engaged in mob violence. There is a member of the Sangha who disrobes, jumps up and down and exposes himself, in public, against the mosque. Others break down the entrance of the mosque. A Chief Prelate from the Dambulla Temple suggests that the mob is a shramadaanaya, and that destroying the mosque is something that they should in fact be helped by the government.

…At around 3.47 in this video, there is a particularly chilling exchange between one of the Chief Prelates of the Dambulla Temple and a Hindu resident of the area. The female resident, who is not once dis-respectful in her submissions to the Prelate, says that from when she was small, she had worshipped at a Kovil in the area. The Prelate’s immediate answer is whether she is referring to the 1800′s. In a menacing Sinhala idiom that loses a lot of its original violence in translation, the Chief Prelate threatens to either remove the Kovil, or have it removed along with the homes of the Hindu residents, noting that they are all there illegally. The Chief Prelate notes, through a Sinhala adage, that not only are the crows attempting to fly over their heads, they are now attempting to enter the nest as well – a clear reference to the Hindus and Muslims in the areas.

…Late last year, a similar mob also led by Buddhist monks destroyed another Muslim place of worship. Photos of the incident show Police just standing by, and a green flag with Islamic iconography being burnt. Mervyn Silva, a senior government Minister whose public record of violence is well documented and is protected by no less than the ruling family, openly threatens to maim and kill human rights defenders and, literally, in the same breath says he is a good Sinhala Buddhist. Some of these statements were made in a leading temple in Colombo, with members of the Buddhist clergy present, who went on to bless the Minister.

It is alleged by the protesters that the mosque is an illegal structure, and built more recently than local Muslims assert; however, another article on the site has posted what appear to be the mosque’s deeds. Bill Weinberg notes and discusses some other sources at World War 4 Report here; the evidence strongly suggests that the monks’ attack was motivated by Sinhalese chauvinism.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

From Wood TV, 27 January:

ALLEGAN, Mich. (WOOD) – Rep. Dave Agema told 24 Hour News 8 he thinks Allegan’s police chief overreacted when he shut down an event the representative and a self-proclaimed former terrorist were both speaking at.

Allegan City Police Chief Rick Hoyer told 24 Hour News 8, he didn’t find out there was a bounty on the head of Kamal Saleem, until his speech at Allegan High School was already underway.

…Hoyer said Commissioner [Willis] Sage actually walked up to one of his officers during the event and told him that Saleem had a $25 million dollar bounty. That officer, a sergeant on the force, checked out the information with Saleem’s body guard. When the armed body guard confirmed it, telling police that Islamic terrorists who follow the teaching of the Quran that have been directed to behead Saleem, that’s when Hoyer said they took action.

Hoyer perhaps did misjudge the situation – but he found himself himself having to make a immediate decision on a matter of public safety based on information given to him at the last moment. It appears that Saleem was a victim of his own self-publicity;  the obvious question is why, if the “$25 million” bounty really exists, Saleem is not under round-the-clock police guard, in the same way that Salman Rushdie was for many years.

The Thomas More Law Center has now put its own spin on the event in Allegan, as it announces a lawsuit:

Amid shouts of “What about free speech?” from the audience, the Allegan Police Department ordered the event shut-down.   School officials notified police that they had received a letter complaining about the event from Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI).   The letter asked the school to disallow the event despite an existing contract.  CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism funding trial in U. S. history, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation.

…TMLC’s federal lawsuit was brought on behalf of State Representative David Agema; a chapter leader of ACT! for America, Elizabeth Griffin; Allegan County Commissioner, Willis Sage; and Mark Gurley, one of the event sponsors.

In fact, the TMLC’s lawsuit stinks of bad faith – and here’s why:

193. Defendants’ pretextual claim that the free speech event needed to be shut down subverts the true cause for the closing of the free speech event: complying with the demands of  hecklers, evidenced by the letter of Defendants CAIR, People For the American Way, Walid, and Keegan, and valuing the heckler’s veto over Constitutional freedoms of Plaintiffs.

…225. Defendants CAIR, [Dawud] Walid, People For the American Way, and [Michael] Keegan intentionally interfered with the Contract by sending a letter to Defendant [Kevin] Harness requesting  that the School District breach its Contract with Plaintiffs. 

226. Defendants CAIR, Walid, People For the American Way, and Keegan improperly interfered with the Contract.

First, there is no evidence that Hoyer acted on any “letter” that was sent to the School District – why would he? And if so, why would he have allowed the event to get underway in the first place? But more substantively, the TMLC is seeking to punish groups and individuals for daring to contact the School District with their concerns about Saleem. Neither CAIR nor PFAW had any decision-making power over whether the event went ahead – the only reason they are included in the lawsuit is because TMLC wishes to suppress free speech while pretending to uphold it. It’s a SLAPP, and utter humbug.

In fact, there are very good public interest reasons for interested parties and concerned individuals to have contacted the School District – and PFAW’s liberal political perspective or troubling allegations about some of CAIR’s associations are irrelevant. Saleem presents himself as an ex-terrorist turned Christian whistleblower, when in fact his back-story is extremely dubious, and his claim to be an expert on Islam cannot be taken seriously. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, he spoke a Christian Right/conservative conflab called The Awakening 2012; as Right Wing Watch has documented, he used the occasion (standing alongside Frank Gaffney) to allege that when Obama appears to pledge allegiance to the flag, he holds his hand in a special way which shows that in reality he is praying to Allah. Saleem also stated that Roe vs Wade was part of a plot to establish shariah, and that plans to reform immigration law involves “sending money to Hamas” in order to import Muslims, with the result “this world will become past tense and one day we’ll be wearing ragheads”. Such extravagances speak for themselves – and demonstrate that Saleem’s presence degrades the dignity any educational setting.

In 2010, Saleem was debunked in a piece published in Books & Culture, a sister publication of the evangelical Christianity Today. According to the article’s author, Doug Howard:

I first encountered Kamal Saleem when he appeared at Calvin College in November 2007. A look at his website told me immediately that he was not who he said he was. The signature of his deception was his statement that “in my family was the Grand Wazir of Islam.” The term is ridiculous, a spurious title meant to mislead the innocent with an aura of authority.

…In The Blood of Lambs, Kamal Saleem writes, “I wanted to be like Bond.” In these pages he is Bond, James Bond, in size 6X. He gets those emphatic rivals, the PLO and the Muslim Brotherhood, both to recruit him. He recalls the intricate details of raids he carried out at age seven. Abu Jihad himself teaches him how to use an AK-47. He is shown off by Yasser Arafat as a model warrior. In Libya at age 14 he has Muammar Qaddafi gushing in gratitude. In Iraq, he waves to Saddam Hussein… Even if one were disposed to give these entertaining claims the benefit of the doubt, the book’s frequent mistakes give the reader pause. The Islamic umma does not mean one world government, and it is not “coming.” The PLO was a secular organization even though Yasser Arafat prayed and quoted the Qur’an.

Further details appear in a recent article in Mother Jones:

Saleem claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has put a $25 million bounty on his head, and that there have been attempts to earn it: After a 2007 event in Chino Hills, California, he writes in his book, he returned to his Holiday Inn to find his room ransacked and a band of dangerous Middle Easterners on his trail. Saleem describes calling the police to alert them to an assassination attempt. Local law enforcement, however, has no record of any such incident.

The same article contains a quote from someone who knew Saleem in the USA before he was famous:

…[Wally] Winter recalls his former roommate as a devout Muslim whose yarns often lapsed into wild exaggeration. “He could sell swampland in Louisiana,” Winter says. “I really do not believe the story about the terrorism. I totally believe that he would make up something like that to either make money or become well known.”

The City of Allegan, meanwhile, has issued a statement, as reported by MLive:

Attorney Scott Smith, representing Allegan, said in a statement that the city has not been served with the lawsuit, but he reviewed it this morning. It names the city, police chief, police officers, school officials and two advocacy groups as defendants.

…”This lawsuit is disappointing in many ways,” Smith wrote. “It is based on conjecture, logical fallacies, and, more disappointingly, factual inaccuracies. The plaintiffs did not even spell one of the defendants’ names correctly. It is disappointing that the lawsuit wrongly imputes motives to the police officers.”

He said he was disappointed that the lawsuit was filed. He said the city cooperated with Thomas More as it sought information about the Jan. 26 event.

“The City quickly provided the requested information and offered to address any other questions or concerns the Thomas More Law Center or its client might have. But, without any further inquiries or any attempts to address the plaintiffs’ concerns, a lawsuit was filed. If, as seems to be alleged by the complaint, its sole purpose is to ensure the defendants respect First Amendment rights, a lawsuit was unnecessary.”

UPDATE: I note that one of the the plaintiffs, Mark Gurley, is a pastor (at the Healing Rooms of Grand Rapids), and he is a member Rick Joyner’s Christian Right group the Oak Initiative. He’s also a birther.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

In January 2009, two articles in British tabloids revealed that “Muslim fanatics” were planning to harm public figures in the UK as a response to Israeli actions in Gaza. The People revealed that the singer Madonna was a target because of her “Jewish links”, while the Sun issued a front page story (since deleted from its website) claiming that Alan Sugar was a “terror target” because he is Jewish. Both stories relied heavily on postings taken from on-line discussion forums, and were deeply problematic. In the case of the Madonna story, Unity at Ministry of Truth noted that the postings cited came from newly-created accounts that could not be traced back to anyone, while the evidence of a plot against Sugar was discovered by Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads to have been planted by Glen Jenvey, who was the person who claimed to have discovered it.

Jenvey’s status as an independent “counter-terror” expert had been endorsed by Patrick Mercer MP, who was formerly Shadow Minister for Homeland Security. Further, Mercer’s office acted as a conduit between Jenvey and the media – Tim has published an email in which a member of Mercer’s staff pitched a (different) story to the People after having “been in touch with Mr Jenvey about a number of things”. As the evidence against Jenvey piled up, Mercer issued a statement in which he announced that he would be “looking carefully”  into “his dealings with Mr Jenvey”. However, he’s been reluctant to discuss the matter since then; instead, he discussed Tim with Nadine Dorries MP, and followed her lead by crying “stalker” to deflect further critical scrutiny (Mercer found this tactic so congenial that he went on to use the same trick against his ex-lover).

Tim’s interaction with Mercer was recently (20 April) raised on Twitter, by someone using the name “Tabloidman” (@tabloidtroll)

@tabloidtroll: @bloggerheads You’re in Private Eye for your little dodgy stunts so often you should be given your own column don’t you think? #hypocrisy

@malcolmcoles: @bloggerheads @tabloidtroll he wasn’t necessarily claiming you were named in it was he? I read it more that your stunts were in it …*

@tabloidtroll: @zelo_street @bloggerheads I was referring to his involvement not naming you insignificant little man.

@tabloidtroll: @zelo_street @bloggerheads God this is boring! Just see his manipulation in the Eye of far right activist to have a go at Patrick Mercer.

Tabloidman has spent the last few months firing off vituperative Tweets against various individuals involved with the Leveson Inquiry; his targets have included Tom Watson MP and Richard Peppiatt, who last year quit working for the Star in disgust at the paper’s standards. The above attack on Tim was Tabloidman’s response to an inquiry from Tim as to whether he would like to declare an interest.

Tabloidman’s accusations are a libellously garbled travesty. The only occasion on which material derived from Tim’s researches has featured in Private Eye was in relation to Tim’s exposure of Jenvey; however, it was not a “stunt”, nobody was “manipulated” (and Jenvey is not a “far right activist”), and the target was the Sun, not Patrick Mercer. The Eye was able to follow the evidence trail for the story independently; and having done so, this was probably why the journalist concerned felt that he could use Tim’s work without giving any credit (and to make a “nutter” jibe when Tim complained). I read the Eye regularly, and I’ve never seen anything else that could be traced back to Tim (although some input from Tim would certainly improve the magazine).

But why did Tabloidman seize on the Mercer connection in the first place? As Tim notes in an interview for the Social Media Show, this is not likely to be an issue that many people are familiar with. This, and other reasons not in the public domain, led Tim to suspect the identity of Tabloidman to be a freelance journalist named Dennis Rice, whose credits appear to include a story about a piece of burnt toast that looked like Osama bin Laden.

As Tim now writes on his blog, he recently asked Rice by email if he was Tabloidman; Rice replied, stating that he was not, and that his “lawyers will deal with anything anyone would be foolish enough to print – alleging or otherwise – that I am”. Earlier, a message had been sent to Tabloidman containing a weblink to a page on Tim’s site. Tabloidman clicked on the link; the IP matched that of Rice’s email.

It’s not clear why Rice would consider being linked to Tabloidman to be damaging to his reputation: he commended Tabloidman on his own Twitter feed, and he has been in communication with Tabloidman about Tim; after a link to Tim’s piece was promoted by Tom Watson, Tabloidman cautioned Watson that

Ricey told me about the loon stalking him. Be careful of the company you keep. (1)

Think Thames Valley Police will want to talk to you. They are currently investigating your (clearly unchecked) source. (2)

Rice has indeed reported Tim to the police for daring to ask him about Tabloidman; he has also deleted his own Twitter feed while allowing Tabloidman to rant on against Tim, both on Twitter and on his own website. These attacks include the claim that Tim has “harassed” Nadine Dorries (a subject I have discussed here) and a deliberate misrepresentation of the IP address issue – Tabloidman states that Tim is claiming to have captured an IP from a Twitter DM, which is of course impossible. Tabloidman also reportedly claims that his anonymous Tweets attacking people amount to “whistleblowing”, and that his anonymity is therefore protected by law.

Coincidentally, Rice  had a “terror target” story of his own, back in September 2008: in an article for the Express (sister paper to the Star), he wrote that Paul McCartney “has been threatened that he will be the target of suicide bombers unless he abandons plans to play his first concert in Israel.” The report quoted criticism of McCartney from “a number of websites”, although Omar Bakri provided the meat of the piece with a suitably sinister quote. Patrick Mercer also makes an inevitable appearance in the story.

The genre of over-hyped and poorly-sourced terror threat stories has survived Jenvey’s exposure. Over the past couple of years, British newspaper readers have pondered the spectre of “HIV-needle bombs” (that was another one from Mercer); “breast-implant bombs“; and, just recently, an “Olympic cyanide-cream” scare.

* I’ve included Malcolm Coles’ interjection as he’s a media insider – “Product Director at Trinity Mirror”.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

From the Nigerian Voice:

The President and founder of the Liberty Gospel Foundation Church, Lady Apostle Helen Ukpabio says she has indefinitely cancelled her scheduled visits to the USA which where billed for March and May this year.

Speaking through her attorney, Victor Ukutt, Esq., the Pentecostal Pastor and Nollywood actress, who has her church branches spread all over Africa, said her decision to cancel her trip was based on the series of death threat she received from organisations like Stepping Stones Nigeria a based in the United Kingdom which claimed to work as a charity to protect witch children in Nigeria.

Ukpabio, as I’ve blogged a number of times, is internationally notorious as a proponent of the belief  - not found anywhere in the Bible – that personal misfortune can be caused by child witches, and that children identified as witches require “deliverance”. While Ukpabio asserts that she cures children afflicted in this way through a harmless ceremony, the doctrine has caused great harm to children and families.

Ukpabio featured in a British newspaper report at the end of 2007, and the plight of “witch children” in Nigeria so was brought to widespread attention by Gary Foxcroft in a documentary broadcast a year later. Foxcroft, who runs Stepping Stones, has been a target of abuse and lurid accusations ever since, and a conference on the subject organised in Nigeria by Leo Igwe was attacked by members of Ukpabio’s church. I’ve also experienced how Ukpabio operates – while my blogging on the subject can hardly be compared to Gary and Leo’s front-line efforts, I feature alongside them on an abusive website registered to Ukpabio’s webmaster (a certain Gabriel Egba, who runs a company called Gaboeski - he’s personally supportive of Ukpabio, having forwarded a message I sent to him on to the church).

Ukpabio visited Houston in 2010, and she announced her plan to return at the start of this year. Pastor Godwin Umotong, who was due to host her, was interviewed by Sarhara TV in February.

The most obvious question now concerns the supposed “death threats”. It should be noted that Ukutt does not quote or provide any evidence of these threats, nor does he give any indication of having spoken with police about them. Now, why might that be?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

The Daily Mail sniffs out a story about Laura Adshead, a former girlfriend of David Cameron who has reportedly become a nun based at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut:

Laura dated him from the spring of 1990 until summer 1991, and while he worked at Conservative Central Office, she went on to become the then Prime Minister John Major’s correspondence secretary.

Then their lives took different turns. Mr Cameron was selected for political stardom, while Laura left politics to study at the Wharton business school in Philadelphia.

…She became an executive in Manhattan for Ogilvy & Mather, the advertising agency that inspired the television drama Mad Men – but the stresses of success, and, perhaps, of personal rejection, finally proved too much for her.

…She says: ‘I feel like I tried most things in life that are supposed to make you happy. That journey took me down into alcoholism and drug addiction.’

It has been suggested that her downward spiral may have started soon after her break-up from the future Prime Minister.

In a 2007 biography of Cameron, a former colleague of the pair at Conservative headquarters recalled Laura being granted a ‘period of compassionate leave’ to recover from the heartbreak.

The key fudge in the above is this: “it has been suggested”. Suggested by whom? Not by Francis Elliott and James Hanning, the authors of Cameron: the Rise of the New Conservative, which is the biography cited above. An unnamed manager indeed (indiscreetly) mentions a “period of compassionate leave” following the break-up (p. 79), but there is no indication this was just before (or, by implication, caused) a “downward spiral”; in fact, the Mail’s own narrative (again taken from Elliott and Hanning) acknowledges that her time with Cameron preceded a successful career (she became correspondence secretary to John Major), and that she subsequently dated Andrew Roberts. The word “perhaps” before “personal rejection” is an indication that the supposed link (between two events more than 10 years apart) has has been plucked out of thin air.

Elliott and Hanning themselves wrote a piece for the Mail in 2007, adapted from their biography:

One colleague who took a shine to him was Laura Adshead, whom Cameron had known slightly at Oxford. The romance began in the spring of 1990 and lasted until summer 1991, although it does not seem to have ended tidily.

…Later she moved to New York, where she had a spell in a Catholic retreat, tending goats and immersing herself in religion. She then carved out a successful career in advertising.

In the biography this becomes “a spell as a nun”, which is not quite the same thing as “a spell in a Catholic retreat”, and is followed by a return to London as a “management consultant”; presumably this was all before she made a firmer decision to commit herself to the religious life. Either way, though, they avoid the patronizing suggestion Adshead must have become a nun as a result of romantic unhappiness.

The hook for the Mail‘s article is a new HBO documentary, in which Adshead features in a supporting role. The programme, God is Bigger than Elvis, focuses on Dolores Hart, Mother Prioress at the abbey. Hart has an interesting back-story, having been Hollywood actress in the 1950s and 1960s and having starred with Elvis Presley.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Writer was formerly the EDL member “most trusted” by Pamela Geller

The anti-Islam 4 Freedoms Community website has updated its Code of Conduct:

2.1 Legality

(b) Unlawful Killing
You must not endorse or encourage people to perform criminal executions. However, you can endorse enforcement of execution by the state (capital punishment) after application of due judicial process.

According to a note on the same page, the change was made on 22 April. It was made in response to an inquiry from the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladget about a recent thread on the site; Roberta Moore (posting as “Morrigan Emaleth”) had used this thread to express her disappointment that Anders Brevik had failed to kill Eskil Pedersen, the AUF leader who survived the Utøya massacre by escaping by boat:

It seems Breivik missed one. This is precisely the coward that should have been killed. Cowards can run but eventually they meet their fate. May KARMA play its part now.

This was a bit too much for one other poster to the site, but his squeamishness merely served to spur Moore on further:

If Hitler had been killed he would not have caused the death of 11 million people. Right or wrong?

I am not interested in puritan views, but rational ones. We are debating serious issues and frankly I do not care who reads this. I am not here to appease the leftist media. 

As has been widely noted, Moore has recently written in the same sanguinary vein on Facebook and on the website of the Jewish Defence League UK; her  article on the JDL site denounces the “kangaroo court” trying Breivik, and the “Leftist slander constantly being thrown to undermine him and his views.”

Dagbladet says that it contacted Alan Lake, who chairs the 4 Freedoms Community site. An FFC administrator responded by admitting that there had been an “oversight” in the site’s house rules, which had now been amended:

Dagbladet har også kontaktet FFC-leder Alan Lake. Da opplyste en administrator at FFC setter pris på å bli orientert om saken, og at de har hatt en «forglemmelse» i sine ordensregler. Ordensreglene er nå utvidet.

Roberta Moore originally came to prominence as the leader of the EDL Jewish Division, although she split with the organisation last June; Pamela Geller, describing Moore as “the person whom I most trusted in the EDL”, consequently temporarily withdrew her support for the EDL (see here). Somewhat oddly, Moore continues to maintain a registered company called the “EDL English Defence League”, although it does not appear to have any relationship to the EDL.

Various sites have posted a photo which shows Lake kissing Moore on the cheek; this tender moment appears to have occurred at a meeting of EDL leaders at the Old Bank of England pub in Fleet Street, London – parts of the meeting appear in an Australian documentary which was broadcast in March 2011. Like Moore, Lake has since become estranged from the EDL, and claims that he was a secret EDL strategist or “bankroller” are perhaps exaggerated.

(Footnote: Moore also has an associate named Robert Bartholomeus. The coincidental phonetic similarity with my own name has on occasion led to confusion and unintentional defamation; I would ask anyone writing on the subject to take care on this point.)

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Pat Robertson, 2003, on Charles Taylor of Liberia:

So we’re undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country. And how dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, ‘You’ve got to step down.’

Pat Robertson, some time later:

In terms of Liberia, I was accused of being an associate of Charles Taylor. I never met Charles Taylor in my life. I’ve never met him once. I spoke to him once on the telephone, but he called me, but I’ve never seen him in my life. So be it the Washington Post indicated that I had some business dealings with Charles Taylor, but it just wasn’t true. It is my feeling that the best help you can give to people is to enable them to have economic progress, not just handouts, but to have industry that will give jobs.

The second quote is from an interview called “The Life of Dr. M.G. Pat Robertson- Part 2″, from CBN’s Turning Point series; no date is given, but other sites suggest it was broadcast in 2009.

As Christianity Today notes:

Robertson’s critics noted his financial interest in Liberia; at the time, Robertson had a four-year-old, $8 million agreement with Taylor to mine gold in the country. Robertson told the Washington Post that the mining operation, called Freedom Gold, was meant to fund humanitarian and evangelical efforts in Liberia.

Last year, Robertson’s CBN also came out heavily in support of Laurent Gbagbo in the Ivory Coast; the station declared that the Christian Gbagbo had lost an election due to voter fraud orchestrated by Saudi Arabia and “Muslims in France”. When Gbagbo announced a military curfew, CBN noted with satisfaction that the “timing is perfect” for the evening broadcast of CBN programmes in the evenings.

Support from CBN and Pat Robertson is perhaps something of a bad omen: Taylor was just a few days ago convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, while Gbagbo is currently himself facing charges at the International Criminal Court. Also currently facing trial is Robertson’s old friend Rios Montt.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

From Charles Johnson at LGF, last week:

Vatican Cracks Down on Uppity US Nuns

The Vatican is cracking down on American nuns who aren’t opposed to women’s rights and gay rights, which should surprise no one who’s been following the Catholic Church’s swing to the right.

As will be immediately obvious to anyone, the headline contains irony; Johnson does not believe that the nuns are being “uppity”, but he has used the word in order to convey the ugliness of what he believes to be the Vatican’s attitude towards them.

However, it is apparently useful for some individuals to pretend that the headline has a different meaning – here’s Dana Loesch, writing on Twitter:

…Why it was a “slur” when Rush said “uppity,” but not Charles? Hack. (1)

…I love nothing more than when husky white progressive males try to explain why it’s OK for them to use racial slurs. (2)

…No, no, noes. Charles previously classified it as a slur. According to his own rules, it still is one. (3)

And so on along the same lines.

This goes back to last November, when Rush Limbaugh described Michelle Obama as “uppity”; Glenn Beck concurred, identifying the word with “snotty”. However, “uppity” also has the connotation of “getting above one’s station”, and when applied to black people evokes memories of the phrase “uppity negro”, used by racist whites in the American south to demonize black social advancement; Limbaugh is certainly aware of this. Johnson was among those who attacked Limbaugh and Beck for using the word in the context of Michelle Obama.

Loesch’s argument begins with the suggestion that by using the phrase “uppity nuns”, Johnson understands that “uppity” isn’t really a racial term; this was the “gotcha” non-point made by a Christian Right blog called Blue Collar Philosophy, which is the ur-text of the subsequent attacks. However, this then slides into the mocking suggestion that since Johnson has claimed that “uppity” has a racial meaning, the fact that he has used the word himself means that he must guilty of using “racial slurs”. Blue Collar Philosophy also links triumphantly to a Tweet on the subject of black nuns:

Many Catholic nuns are black. @Lizardoid says they’re “uppity.” (4)

Pay no heed to the details that that “uppity US nuns” does not refer to a racial group, or that Johnson has used “uppity” to mock the Vatican’s attitude towards the nuns, rather than to describe what he thinks of the nuns.

Of course, “person on the internet is troll” is not much of a story, but the above is worth logging because Loesch has a public profile as a well-connected conservative talk-show host and as a contributor to CNN. She is controversial for other reasons, but her Tweets here show her up as a hack willing to engage in vicious distortions for political gain. Her bad faith does not just insult the intelligence of the public; she undermines her own integrity. She could perhaps defend herself by claiming that she’s simply echoing what’s been passed along the food-chain (The Blue Collar Philosophy post was picked up by Dan Riehl), but what kind of a person makes a dozen goading Tweets on a point they haven’t properly checked out?

Johnson is a lightning rod for this sort of nonsense: back in January, the fact that all books available on Amazon can be purchased through his site’s personal store prompted the late Andrew Breitbart to claim that Johnson is “PROFITING from the racist Turner Diaries”; prior to that, scepticism of a claim by Robert Spencer that a family shooting in Texas had been an honour killing provoked Spencer to accuse Johnson of “excusing” honour crimes in return for payment. There is also a chorus of lesser blogs along the same lines which are probably not worth mentioning – but the words of Loesch, Breitbart, and Spencer are of wider significance as providing the ideological underpinning for a large-scale political movement. It’s all rather unattractive.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Last December, Good published a profile by Kristin Rawls of Jason “Molotov” Mitchell and his wife Patricia (“DJ Dolce”). Molotov is one of WND‘s more abrasive commentators: he has no problem with the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill, pointing out that it reflects Uganda’s culture and that gay Ugandans can simply leave the country; he has a long list of “Nazis” that includes Obama and Wiccans; and – inevitably – he regards Sandra Fluke as a “slut”. I looked at some of his material here, and managed to elicit a comment from the man himself.

Good’s profile includes some personal background:

Molotov has a more troubled past. His father was an evangelical Christian who worked construction. His mother has struggled for years with symptoms of mental illness. Molotov disapprovingly notes that she “had a very strong feminist thing going on,” and one day, “my father came home and she’d just left a note and taken me with her. She was cursed by God for doing that. To this day, she hears demonic voices non-stop.”

Molotov’s father Wayne Mitchell may indeed have “worked construction” when Molotov was very young, but for most of Molotov’s life he has been an evangelist and pastor. One wonders why Molotov has decided to downplay this now; a 2008 article in Harper’s mentions that

Mitchell’s parents divorced when he was five, and his father, an evangelical pastor who now heads the Beacon City Church in Boston, raised him.

According to a 1995 article in Charisma (snippet on Google Books), Wayne Mitchell “worked with Maranatha Campus Ministries in the 1980s”, and he created an organisation to evangelise foreign students, called “Churches Serving Internationals” in Durham, NC. Jay Rogers of the Forerunner (a Maranatha newsletter) has further details:

I was contacted by Jason Mitchell… Jason mentioned that he knew The Forerunner and that his dad had been part of Maranatha Ministries. Jason didn’t remember me, but I knew him quite well when he was a teenager. His father, Wayne Mitchell, now a pastor in Boston, and I produced The Mandate, a version of The Foreunner for Chinese students, for three years in the mid-1990s.

I am glad to see that Jason has turned out to be even more radical than his father. God is truly a sovereign God!

Maranatha has a particularly controversial history; the organisation was was accused of authoritarianism and abuse in the 1980s, and it collapsed in 1989 – I discussed this here. Some of those involved with Maranatha then reformed as Morning Star International, later rebranded as Every Nation. In the 1990s, Wayne Mitchell was the associate pastor of a Morning Star church in Durham called King’s Park International Church. He moved to Boston in 2001, but an association remains: the senior pastor at KPIC, Ron Lewis, created a new organisation to evangelise students, called Campus Harvest, and Molotov’s “Illuminati Pictures” created a promo for this group in 2007. In Boston, Wayne Mitchell formed Beacon City Church; however, as I discussed here, Beacon City was originally “Maranatha Christian Church of Boston”, and later “Boston Morning Star Church” (it has recently “joined forces” with another Boston church, called Aletheia Church).

Another student group created by KPIC is High Rise, which in 2009 hosted Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa. This was before Ssempa’s had become infamous for a viral video in which he conflated gay sex with coprophagy, but his views were very much on record.

Footnote

Morning Star International should not be confused with Rick Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries. However, Joyner is friendly with Bob Weiner, who headed Maranatha. Another controversial figure formerly associated with Maranatha is Pastor Terry Jones, as I discussed here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »