Bartholomew's Notes

A bit of an experiment: I’ve decided to launch a spin-off blog devoted to the Universal Peace Federation and the many prominent “Ambassadors for Peace” who are now associated with the organisation, which was founded by Rev Moon in 2005. The UPF claims to have played a significant role in development and conflict resolution in numerous parts of the world, and a remarkable number of individuals have accepted “Ambassador” status. While various other bloggers and journalists have been keeping an eye on the Unification Church and Moon’s activities in the USA, not much attention has been given to the reports on the UPF that now regularly appear on international news-sites ranging from Azerbaijan to Zambia as well as on the UPF website itself.

Here it is, then:

Ambassadors for Moon

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Strange (and slightly confusing) news from the Canadian Gazette (emphasis added):

Emmett (Pops) Johns, the Roman Catholic priest who ministers to Montreal street kids, Gemma Raeburn-Baynes, a veteran black community activist, and a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, Alusine Bah, are this year’s local recipients of the Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award.

The honour is presented by the U.S. Consul General each year to individuals who best exemplify King’s ideals.

…The Universal Peace Federation of Montreal, founded by Rev. Sun Myung Moon to promote interreligious reconciliation and family renewal, also received an award.

Mayor Gérald Tremblay presented the awards today at city hall.

So did Mayor Tremblay present the awards, or was it the US Consul General? Or both of them? And did the UPF get the same “Legacy Award”, or something different tacked onto the same ceremony? Alas, there is nothing on the consular or UPF websites, and there are no other media reports…

It is worth noting that the UPF has recently been working closely with King’s son, as I blogged here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Follows 2003 and 2005 cases

Index on Censorship has the story of Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, the young Afghan journalist who has been sentenced to death for supposedly downloading and distributing an Iranian article (unidentified) deemed to be blasphemous:

Deeply conservative Afghan clerics, most of whom have never used a computer or the Internet, believe Kambakhsh himself wrote the article and therefore found him guilty of blasphemy.

Because there is no clear punishment for downloading “un-Islamic” articles from the Internet, the primary court of appeal asked clerics to comment. The conservative clerics, who had not investigated the case, demanded the death penalty.

…Afghan Minister of Culture and Information Karim Khuram has said he was sorry to hear that the court has issued a death sentence, but added: “What he did was outside his professional activities and nothing related to journalism. So I have to respect the court.”

Yaqub Ebrahimi, who works for IWPR (Institute for War and Peace Reporting), told me that his brother was being punished for articles and reports that he [Yaqub Ebrahim] had written about local warlords and violators of human rights.

This is in Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh province, in the conservative north of the country. The BBC has the detail that:

Balkh province’s deputy attorney general, Hafizullah Khaliqyar, warned other journalists that they would be arrested if they attempted to support Kambakhsh.

Further details of Khaliqvar’s outburst are given on Kerala Next, and provide a bit of black comic relief:

Khaliqyar had mistakenly referred to the reporter as “Pervez Musharraf,” the name of the Pakistan president, prompting laughter from the journalists.

“Journalists are supporting Kambakhsh. I will arrest any journalist trying to support him after this,” Khaliqyar stormed.

He also said Kambakhsh had “confessed” and must be punished.

However, according to CNN, Kambakhsh claims that someone else added his name to the document print-out and then distributed it. CNN also notes why Ebrahimi may have been the real target:

Among his best-known pieces was an expose of the “dancing boys,” teenage boys who dress up as girls and dance for male patrons at parties thrown by some commanders in northern Afghanistan.

That report can be seen here, and it includes a condemnation of the practice by Khaliqyar. CNN continues:

In other reports, Ibrahimi has named government officials who extort money from locals, [Jean Mackenzie, country director of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting] said.

The day after Kaambaksh was arrested, authorities paid Ibrahimi a visit and combed through his computer and notebooks looking for names of sources who helped him in his reporting, MacKenzie said.

An article by MacKenzie on the subject can be seen here. It quotes Rahimullah Samander, head of the Afghan Independent Journalists’ Association:

“First of all, the arrest of Parwez is illegal,” he told IWPR. “Keeping him in prison for three months was also illegal. The decision by the court and the prosecutor’s office was due to pressure from some political and jihadi groups. This is a plot against Parwez, a well-organised one.”

Karim Khuram, the Minister of Culture and Information who “respects” the court’s decision, is actually not much of a fan of culture – last year he banned a Bollywood film made in Afghanistan entitled Kabul Express and hauled in an actor for questioning. He has also interfered with the running of Radio Television Afghanistan.

This is not the first blasphemy case targeting journalists; back in 2005, Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, who edited a magazine entitled Haqoq-e-Zan (Women’s Rights), received a two-year prison sentence for the crime; it was reduced to six months by the high court in Kabul. Two journalists were also arrested in 2003, as Reporters Without Borders reported at the time:

Sayeed Mahdawi, the editor of the independent, Dari-language weekly Aftab (Le Soleil) and Ali Reza Payam, a journalist with the newspaper, were arrested in Kabul on 17 June because of a column published on 11 June that was deemed to be blasphemous…Headlined “Holy fascism,” the column called for Islam to be adapted to the modern world in the drafting of Afghanistan’s new constitution, condemned the crimes committed in Islam’s name by former mujahideen chiefs, and questioned the supreme court president, a religious conservative close to warlord Abdul Sayyaf. The column also posed the question: “If Islam is the last and most complete of the revealed religions, why do the Muslim countries lag behind the modern world?”

…The government asked a special commission for press freedom and news media evaluation to determine the degree of responsibility of the two journalists before referring the case to the judicial authorities. The information and culture ministry supported the claim that the column was blasphemous. “It was our duty to stop this newspaper’s publication,” the deputy minister said.

This was before Karim Khuram’s appointment as minister.

…Reporters Without Borders revealed on 6 August that the supreme court, in a document that had been kept secret, had also called for the death penalty for Mahdawi and Payam for blasphemy. The 10-page document, signed by the court’s president, confirmed the death penalty request made by the court’s department for fatwas. The government would have been obliged to implement this decision by the country’s highest court, although the case was already before another court, lower in hierarchy. President Karzai had transferred the case to a Kabul civil court fearing the supreme court would hold a blasphemy trial.

The two men were released from jail pending their trial, and they wisely took the opportunity to seek asylum abroad – apparently helped by the same information and culture minister, who doubtless saw this as the easiest way to dig himself out of a hole in the face of international condemnation. This time, though, it looks like that option will not be available, either for the minister’s successor, or for Kambakhsh.

Name variations: Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh; Sayad Parwez Kambaksh; Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi; Aftab; Sayeed Mirhassan Mahdawi;; Sayed Madawi; Ali Payam Sestan; Ali Payam Sestani

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Staying with Private Eye, news (p. 29) of a possible court action emerging out of the 1991 Orkney “Satanic Panic” that led to nine children being taken into care by social workers and a number of adults – including the local church minister – accused of ritual abuse. The case is to be brought by “MW”, who was eight years old in 1991 and came to the attention of social workers due to an actually abusive father:

MW was…said to have given social workers the story of widespread ritual abuse; but she has maintained that she was told to copy a picture of a satanic circle supplied by her interviewer. In taped interviews, MW has said that there was no ritual abuse.

MW has been spurred into action by a documentary that appeared British TV in August 2006, entitled Accused:

She was distressed after a key RSSPC social worker opened old wounds by insisting that abuse had taken place.

That would perhaps have been social worker Janette Chisholm, who blithely dismissed the fact all of the supposed victims – now adults – insisted that the “ritual abuse” had not occurred as evidence merely of “denial”. Another social worker featured in the programme perhaps gave away a bit more than he intended to when he admitted bitterly that he and his colleagues had been unprepared for an articulate media campaign launched by the accused parents. MW, who was subsequently abused by foster parents and who left school without qualifications, now wants “an apology and redress”, and she hopes the courts will grant her legal aid to pursue her claim. MW was not included in an apology and compensation package given to the other children because she was in care already.

Back in 2006 it was also announced that families accused of Satanic abuse in Rochdale in 1990 had decided to sue, but there hasn’t been anything in the public domain since. Around the same time, Kyle Sapp in California told reporters that he had been coaxed into lying about Satanic abuse at the McMartin Preschool in the early 1980s. I blogged on all this here.

As it happens, the same issue of the Eye also carries a letter (p. 14) from San Diego psychologist Ellen Lacter, who had written in to defend the work of Valerie Sinason, whom the Eye had criticised in the previous issue (I blogged this here). Lacter praises Sinason for standing “up for victims of ritual crimes when others have been intimidated into silence”. I noted on Talk to Action some months ago that Lacter considers her “mentor” to be Steve Oglevie, who was at the centre of a 1989 incident in Idaho in which the discovery of a dead baby led to a Satanic panic. In 2006 Oglevie was named as a co-defender in a case brought by Donna Marie Krahn, a Canadian woman who claims that she was made to believe that she had been Satanically abused.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

The latest Private Eye magazine (1202, p. 26) has some extra context as to why Andrew Morton’s new biography of Tom Cruise is unavailable from Angus & Robertson, the Australian bookshop chain. The obvious reason is the fear of a libel action (as I blogged here), but the Eye also notes that Angus & Robertson is Murdoch-owned, and that Rupert and his son Lachlan are close to James Packer, son of the late Kerry Packer and a friend of Cruise:

Packer is not only Australia’s richest man but also a dedicated Scientologist, having been recruited by Cruise himself – as Morton reveals in his book. No doubt Packer is greatly relieved that his mates the Murdochs are helping to prevent Australians from reading Morton’s scurrilous book about his mate Tom.

Back in May, Packer’s Nine Network was accused of running a “soft” story on Scientology timed to spoil more critical piece on the Seven Network.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

An interesting piece from Interfax Religion:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov believes the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian diplomacy have been traditionally united with common purposes.

‘Work of Russian diplomats has been consonant with the aspirations of the Russian Orthodox Church for centuries,’ Lavrov said on Monday evening in the Church Councils hall of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral at the annual awarding ceremony of the Orthodox Peoples’ Unity Foundation.

Lavrov received an award for “strengthening relations with the countries of Eastern Christian tradition and developing common humanitarian space in Europe”:

‘Common spiritual heritage has always been an efficient factor of closing in for Orthodox peoples while outside efforts to disturb this unity appeared unworkable,’ the foreign minister stressed.

He thinks that Russia’s relations with Orthodox countries especially with Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Serbia have reached new level.

In particular, Lavrov indicated Russian support for the Serbian cause in Kosovo.

The importance of the Russian Orthodox Church for Putin was noted a few months ago by Time, following the announcement of the reunification with ROCOR (the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia):

Nationalism, based on the Orthodox faith, has been emerging as the Putin regime’s major ideological resource. Thursday’s rite sealed the four-year long effort by Putin, beginning in September 2003, to have the Moscow Patriarchate take over its rival American-based cousin and launch a new globalized Church as his state’s main ideological arm and a vital foreign policy instrument…The Church’s assertiveness and presence is growing — with little separation from the State.

However, while the Russian Orthodox Church is keen to foster Orthodox unity, it has also for a long time challenged the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and a few months ago Russian church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin called for “All-Orthodox meetings” despite relutance from Constantinople. Given the tenuous position of Patriarch Bartholomew – perennially obliged to rely on the good graces of the Turkish government – the subtext seems to be that Moscow ought to be taking the lead here, as it did back in the days when the city was known as the “Third Rome”.

As well as religious unity, the Russian Church likes to promote Slavic solidarity, which is also very useful for Putin. Among those who have been honoured by the Moscow Patriarchate for “strengthening unity of Slav peoples” is none other than Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus (of course, that was before the Russia-Belarus gas dispute).

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Reporters Without Borders reports from Belarus:

Reporters Without Borders is outraged by the three-year prison sentence passed today by a court in Minsk on Alyaksandr Zdvizhkou [var. Alexander Sdvizhkov], former deputy editor of the weekly Zhoda, for reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that first appeared in a Danish newspaper. He was found guilty of “inciting racial hatred” under article 130 of the criminal code at the end of a trial behind closed doors.

That would be the same Belarus where one can buy anti-Semitic tomes such as Convicting Those Who Slaughter Russia (which quotes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion), and Stalin’s Testament, which carries a special endorsement from President Alexander Lukashenko – whose recent Borat-like ruminations on how the city of Bobrusk was a “pig sty” on account of the Jews living there led to an international outcry. Other books in similar vein were noted by the Simon Wiesenthal centre in August; meanwhile, the head of the country’s Pentecostal Union has complained that state television featured his church in a documentary on “destructive cults”.

So why the rather hypocritical crackdown over the Danish cartoons? Lukashenko’s increasing links with Iran are a doubtless significant factor; however, Reporters Without Borders notes that internal politics are also behind the prosecution and jailing:

Zhoda was linked to Alyaksandr Kazulin, who ran against President Alexandre Lukashenko in the March 2006 presidential election. Lukashenko was very critical of Zhoda and Kazulin in a televised speech during the campaign, calling Kazulin a “hoodlum.” The economic supreme court closed Zhoda down on 17 March 2006.

Interfax adds that:

The Belarusian Supreme Court closed Zgoda in March 2006. The newspaper was headed by Alexey Korol, an activist of the Belarusian Social-Democratic party Gramada. The newspaper’s February 18-26, 2006 issue published an article titled Political Creativeness, which was illustrated by a number of cartoons, including those depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

According to Belarusian News:

The case was opened in February 2006 following a complaint by Ismail Varanovich, mufti of the Spiritual Association of Muslims in Belarus. However, the mufti said ahead of the trial that he did not demand criminal punishment for the journalist.

The same source names the judge in the case as Ruslan Aniskevich; he was in the news a few months ago when he took over the trial of five “Young Front” youth opposition activists when the appointed judge refused to take part. Charter 97 quoted a witness at the time:

…in the court room people can hear fairly well how hundreds of people were chanting “Freedom!” outside the court. The defendants, the Young Front members, are quite self-possessed, while the judge, Ruslan Aniskevich, and his assistant, on the contrary, look very frightened…

That case ended in finings, and harsh words from US Ambassador Karen Stewart, who observed the proceedings.

It should be recalled that Lukashenko doesn’t just object to the Muhammad cartoons; he’s also thin-skinned about his own image being taken in vain in satirical drawings, and “offending the honour of Lukashenko” is a criminal offence. The cartoon below is one of several that have led to arrests.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

From the UPI:

The Parliament of Nepal, constituted one year ago on Jan. 15, 2007, made history Wednesday. Cooperation between civil society and the government broke new ground as the first-ever function organized by a non-government organization was held in the Parliament Secretariat Hall of the Sighhadurbar.

The Universal Peace Federation partnered with the Ex-MP’s Club to hold a conference on the theme, “Toward a New Paradigm of Leadership and Good Governance for Peace in the 21st Century.”

Of course, the UPI and the Universal Peace Federation have something in common: the person behind it. This individual was praised by Nepalese PM Girija P. Koirala, who sent a message due to ill-health:

…he thanked the UPF founder, Dr. Sun Myung Moon of Korea, for his “stupendous work” in Nepal over the last several years.

…UPF-Nepal has held a series of six conferences, called the “South Asia Peace Initiatives,” that have brought together monarchists, Maoists and members of the Seven Party Alliance to dialogue on issues and modalities of Nepal’s ongoing peace process. Elections are scheduled for April 10.

Further plaudits are reported in The Rising Nepal:

Minister for Foreign Affairs Sahana Pradhan…hailed the role of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), the organiser of the programme in promoting peace in different parts of the country and hoped that the discussions and inputs at the conference would be able to encourage all to bring about lasting peace.

Addressing the programme former Minister for Education and President of the Ex-MPs Club Ram Hari Joshi said that the UPF believes in the ideal of “One World One Family” and the Club too supports such form of organic unity of mankind.

“The need today is to have leaders having respect for religion so that peace would prevail,” Joshi said.

World & I (a Moon publication) has some more background:

Over the past two years, the Universal Peace Federation of Nepal (UPF-Nepal) has held a series of high-level discussions and public events that have engaged representatives of the royal government, leadership and membership from the main opposition parties, and even Maoist rebel leaders.

Today UPF-Nepal is the only NGO that has active ties with the leadership of all the political parties, representatives in all seventy-five districts of the country through its Ambassador for Peace program, a student organization with offices in ten cities working on at least a thousand campuses (including vocational training centers, two-year colleges, and universities), and, since the end of last year, its own newspaper. The Universal Times, an English and Nepalese biweekly, is published expressly “to contribute to building a peaceful Nepal,” according to UPF-Nepal’s national leader, Ek Nath Dhakal…

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Looks as though you don’t have to be a Saudi billionaire to hinder the distribution of a critical book. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Pan Macmillan will not print a local edition of the book Tom Cruise, An Unauthorised Biography in Australia due to legal concerns, a move that has been labelled an act of censorship.

But the book, which alleges that Scientology played a major role in the breakdown of the marriage between Hollywood superstar Cruise and Nicole Kidman, will still be imported for sale at independent bookshops.

Scientologists have denied claims by the book’s author, Andrew Morton, that Kidman was threatened with blackmail if she spoke out against the controversial religion.

…Two major book retailers, Dymocks and Angus & Robertson, have also said they have legal concerns about the book and will not import copies directly from the US publisher, St Martin’s Press.

However, the US edition will be available from independent bookshops.

I looked at the history of Church of Scientology legal threats (and worse) against journalists back in November.

Hat tip: Bulldada Newsblog

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

An update on the website of Phyllis Chesler:

Once I posted my interview with Lionheart, some readers insisted that Lionheart is a member of the British National Party which is a fascist, neo-Nazi, Holocaust-denying political party. People in the UK, the USA, and in Israel feared that although Lionheart’s freedom of speech in cyberspace is crucial, and that telling the truth about Islam should not lead to anyone’s arrest—that it was equally crucial that freedom-fighters and democrats not inadvertently make alliances with fascists.

At first, I thought that these well-meaning people were wrong about Lionheart. And why? Because I asked him outright if was a member or supporter of the BNP and he passionately denied that this was so. He insisted that he was an anti-racist who had friends of many ethnicities And then, a British blogger sent me the following snippet from Lionheart’s blog.

A pro-BNP screed from the blog follows, probably found the same way I discovered the shocking truth: by mystically typing the words “Lionheart” + “BNP” into Google. Why Chesler was unable to do this is unexplained. We might ask the same about this CBN News report:

…Some conservatives are refusing to support [Paul] Ray [aka “Lionheart”] because of allegations that he is a member or supporter of the British National Party. The BNP is a white supremacist party. Ray reportedly denies membership in the BNP and insists that he is being slandered.

Perhaps CBN doesn’t have the resources to find out for sure? (BTW, we all know what the BNP stands for, but it now eschews public “white supremacist” positions, for strategic reasons) Also looking sheepish is the Jawa Report:

[11 January]: As to the charges that Lionheart is a supporter of the BNP, I’ve seen no evidence of it…

[14 January]: I’ve been defending Lionheart against the accusations that he’s a BNP supporter. Maybe I was wrong?

“Lionheart’s”/Ray’s support evaporated when his BNP sympathies were picked up – and denounced – by LGF; he responded by denouncing LGF as “a traitor, nothing less than the equivalent of a Second World War Nazi collaborator who would have been shot”, which turned out to be biting off rather more than he could chew. He quickly apologised, and quietly removed his pro-BNP blog postings – alas, too late.

There are a couple of lessons here. Firstly, the easy one: that whatever the real dangers of Islamism, hatred of Islam is the first refuge of the scoundrel in the UK and the USA, and as long as you avoid explicitly stating your support for an unambiguously far-right political party you can easily gain the uncritical support and sympathy of lazy conservative pundits who are willing to jump aboard almost any anti-Muslim bandwagon, no matter how foul or preposterous the rhetoric (although there is a free speech issue worth keeping an eye on). The fact that Ray managed to botch such an easy path to blog-glory doesn’t reflect very well on his abilities.

There is also, though, a more difficult observation: we can see a general human failing here, as well as a conservative vice. People want to hear voices that confirm their view of the world, and it takes an effort to consider critically those with a message that seems congenial – I wouldn’t claim to be perfect here, and I can think of a fair few unworthy characters who enjoy standing in certain “liberal” circles, thanks to a bit of “anti-imperialist” ranting.

So, what next for Paul Ray? Bedfordshire on Sunday has some clues:

Paul Ray, who ‘blogs’ as ‘Lionheart’, left Britain for an undisclosed location in the Middle East two years ago.

He claims he was receiving death threats which made it impossible to stay in his home town of Luton.

Since leaving Britain, he has regularly updated his blog with news and opinions on subjects such as the heroin trade, Islamic fundamentalism and police corruption.

Bedfordshire on Sunday understands that Mr Ray has been intending to return to Britain for over a year, in order to make preparations to emigrate officially and permanently.

Somehow I doubt supporters of the BNP are welcome in Israel, if that’s where he’s heading off to.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 25 Comments »