Bartholomew's Notes

From the blurb for The Coalition, a new novel from “Jerry” Boykin and Kamal Saleem:

Our story is set in the not-too-distant future. Muslims have succeeded in becoming the majority of several European populations, adding to their dominance in the Middle East. With the accelerating spread of radical Islam and Sharia law as the backdrop, our character-driven novel tells the story of a divided world and two men who epitomize the ideological chasm…

The Sodality, (operating publically as Global Reparations, an NGO) was formed by a small group of mostly American retired military leaders, businessmen, politicians, and ministers. What started as a loose connection of friends and colleagues crystallized into a powerful network dedicated to fighting the onslaught of global jihad and those conspiring with them for their own agendas.

Based in the Czech Republic with facilities in fifteen locations worldwide, the Sodality runs missions ranging from sabotaging terrorist finances and supply lines to assassinations of terrorist leaders. Their formation and activities were inspired by relentless attacks on a constitutional republic, attacks on the West, and fecklessness government leaders.

…As the spread of the Muslim religion accelerates toward dominance, the war between Sunnis and Shi’as is subjugated to the common desire to destroy Israel and America.

It should be remembered that Saleem has stated that Obama is a secret Muslim who performs an Islamic prayer when he pretends to pledge allegiance to the flag, while Boykin famously warned that Obama is preparing a “private Brownshirt army” to enforce Marxism acorss the USA. Boykin has also called for mosques to be banned in the USA (although he introduced a bit of vagueness to what he meant following controversy).

The book was published last month, and the authors recently discussed it on radio with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios. Boykin and Saleem have been appearing together in the media and at various events for some time, and they are both closely associated with the neo-Pentecostal evangelist Rick Joyner. Boykin’s endorsement of Saleem has also been used to bat away the overwhelming evidence that Saleem has lied extravagantly about his past in order to present himself as an expert on Islam and terrorism.

However, although Boykin and Saleem tend to focus on the Christian Right speaker circuit, The Coalition appears to be a secular affair: the book is published by Post Hill Press, an independent publisher that produces a strange mix of novels, political memoirs and conservative polemics (it also has the current rights to Oliver North’s 1991 Under Fire). Unexpectedly, the imprint is owned by Permuted Press, which publishes apocalyptic horror stories (particularly involving zombies), and this genre appears to be the specialism of the editors who are thanked in The Coalition‘s acknowledgements. Also involved with Post Hill Press is Anthony Ziccardi, who heads Newsmax Media’s Humanix Books.

By contrast, Boykin’s previous creative endeavours  – Danger Close and Kiloton Threat – were co-authored with a professional Christian adventure author (Tom Morrisey) and published through religious imprints. However, The Coalition seems to be part of the same series: in all three books, the main character is named Blake Kershaw, and there are appearances by an elderly General Sam Wilson (there may be other connections between the books). It’s clear that “General Sam” is the real-life Samuel V. Wilson, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency: in Danger Close “Sam Wilson” is a retired General with “an office” at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, just as the real-life Wilson was the college’s president; in Kiloton Threat he’s given the “V.” middle initial; and in the acknowledgements for The Coalition Boykin says that the real “General Sam” is “a ninety-one-year old in and mentor”, fitting with Wilson’s birth in 1923. Wilson appears to have approved of how he was portrayed in the earlier books, for which he provided endorsements.

This time, perhaps the prospect of the good guys running “supply lines to assassinations of terrorist leaders” was seen as bit too red-bloodied for a Christian imprint; here’s a passage in which General Sam gives advice to Kershaw about an invitation to join the counterjihad group:

“I’m as ready to strap it on as I’ve ever been, but I’m also really unsettled with the concept of doing it outside the government… The idea for the Sodality has been floating around me since just after World War Two. I was four square against it until the major moves were made to dismantle our Constitution, and in particular the separation of powers, at the time we were also seeing the greatest threat from without since Pearl Habor. Left to the status quo, America might have already been pulled down to third world chaos. If you take their offer, you will find out what they’ve done in just a few years to buttress the wall around America…”

Coincidentally, one of the leaders of the Sodality is “Lt Gen Bill Garrison”, which just happens to be the same real-life ranking of Lt Gen William G. Boykin, and it’s made clear he’s running a group “with no restrictions on proselyizing”.

The book’s Amazon page includes an endorsement from Oliver North:

To know where our fight against radical Islam is heading, you must read The Coalition by my warrior friend Jerry Boykin and Kamal Saleem. They say it’s fiction. But it’s truth with a warning label: ‘Your Thinking Is About To Be Challenged.

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From the Pink News:

Monk arrested for distributing homophobic leaflets is head of Catholic charity

A monk who was earlier this week arrested for distributing leaflets across Cambridge claiming that gay people are “corrupting young children”, is the director of a Catholic charity which spends tens of thousands of pounds each year.

…PinkNews has discovered that [Damon Jonah] Kelly, who is actually a monk, is the director of the Scotland based charity the Black Hermits.

The Pink News notes that the organisation exists to “promote Roman Catholic religion” and aims “to establish a Roman Catholic monastic centre on the Island of Mull.”

Details about Kelly follow earlier reports of a “sinister monk” distributing leaflets in Cambridge in April, and in Brighton, Market Harborough and Lincoln over the summer. As the Leicester Mercury reported in August:

One resident, who asked not to be named, said: “I saw the monk in Bath Street, followed by two angry people.”

There was also a rumour of an assistant:

A police spokeswoman said… one person who called in to complain said the monk appeared to be with another man, in normal clothing.

She said. “One was in his in late 30s. The other was dressed in a black monk’s outfit.

“Officers attended the area but could not find anyone…”

One recipient posted an image of one leaflet, entitled Homosexualism: A Few Points, to Twitter. This week’s arrest, however, appears to relate to a second publication, called The Works of Darkness. There’s also a third leaflet, a seasonable item titled Christmas, Christ and Anti-Christ. No publisher’s details are apparent, and all three have headings printed in a medievalizing font.

“The Black Hermits” are obscure – there are no details on-line other than official filings on charity and company websites, which show that the name was registered as a company in 2005. However, it should be noted that Kelly is just one of several directors, alongside a nun, a priest, and – rather unexpectedly – a local Mull grandee who was the sister of the late Pamela Harriman. It’s not clear why the Pink News describes him as the “head” of the charity, and there’s no reason to infer that his behaviour (which he’s admitted to) has anything to do with the organisation.

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From J. Lester Feder and Susie Armitage at Buzzfeed:

Russian nationalists and social conservatives appear to be working together to use links with “pro-family” organizations in the U.S. and around the world to promote Russia’s geopolitical agenda, according to emails sent between right-wing activists.

…The emails include frequent correspondence between senior Russian figures, such as [Alexander] Dugin, the financier Konstantin Malofeev — who has close ties to Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine and is a patron of causes dear to the Orthodox Church — and Alexey Komov, an official with the Orthodox patriarchy and the “Russian representative” of the World Congress of Families, a social conservative network based in Rockford, Illinois.

The emails were apparently leaked by Shaltay-Boltay (“Humpty Dumpty”) from the account of a certain Georgy Gavrish, “a former official with the Russian Embassy to Greece” who is part of Dugin’s Eurasianist movement (more on Dugin here). Gavrish is described by Buzzfeed as a “gatekeeper” for Malofeev’s European contacts, and the article says that there are hints that he “is involved in handling Dugin’s relationships with separatists in Ukraine and building links with far-right politicians throughout Europe.”

Komov also sent Gavrish a spreadsheet of foreign participants who were “confirmed” as planning to attend September’s  “Large Families: The Future of Humanity” conference in Moscow – members of the World Congress of Families participated, but Russia’s recent actions in Ukraine meant that the WCF decided it would be prudent for the event not to be an official WCF activity. Komov (who also runs a Russian franchise of Ted Baehr‘s Movieguide) told Gavrish he was sending the names “just in case”.

Details of the conference participants were not a secret, although it’s interesting to have a full list, along with their topics, who recommended them, and details of who apparently paid for their travel (although Komov cautioned Buzzfeed that the spreadsheet may not be completely accurate). From the UK, Benjamin Harris-Quinney  of the Bow Group was described as being “keen to speak on the UK Same Sex Marriage Bill and the LGBT lobby”, while the theme of Thomas Ward of the National Association of Catholic Families and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children was “family protection”. Both are listed as having received travel expenses from Vladimir Yakunin’s Foundation of St Andrew the First-Born; Yakunin, a key member of Putin’s inner circle, is currently under sanctions.

And from the USA: Theodore Baehr* and his daughter Evelyn* (Movieguide); Brian Brown (National Organization for Marriage); Josh Craddock (Personhood USA); John DeFrain* (Professor of Family and Community Development); Michael P. Donnelly (Home School Legal Defense Association); Alejandra Fabris (Citizen Go); Donald Feder (WCF – more on him here); Miriam Grossman* (author of Unprotected and You’re Teaching My Child What?); Father Marcel Guarnizo* (Educational Initiative for Central and Eastern Europe); Lawrence D. Jacobs* (WCF); Keith Mason (Personhood USA), Shelly Locke (Power of Mothers); Terrence McKeegan (Holy See Mission to the UN), Miguel Moreno (Leadership Institute); William J. Murray (Religious Freedom Coalition – more on him here); Austin Ruse (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute – Ruse made links with Malofeev in 2013, as I noted here); Daniel P. Schmidt (Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation); Sharon Slater (Family Watch International); and Steven Weber (Christian Broadcasting Network).

Names marked with an asterisk denote those also listed as having received expenses from the Foundation of St Andrew the First-Born; the others paid their own way.

Meanwhile, an earlier article from Softpedia notes how the emails reveal a wider strategy of promoting Russia in Europe:

The endeavor to attract pro-Russian individuals in Europe is financed by Konstantin Malofeev, according to Shaltay Boltay (Google Translate)…

The individuals are occupying important positions in their countries, which allows them certain degree of influence, and have either met Dugin himself or his representatives…

Among the names listed there are Ion Iliescu (former president of Romania), Suleyman Demirel (former president of Turkey), Roman Giertych (former minister of education in Poland [blogged here – RB]), Viktor Orbán (prime minister of Hungary), Robert Fico (prime minister of Slovakia), Vojislav Kostunica (former president of Serbia), Massimo Fini (Italian journalist), Tiberio Gratsiani (president of the Institute of Geopolitics and Applied Sciences in Italy), Jurgen Elsasser (German journalist and political activist), and Felix Allemand (German anti-globalization blogger).

In June, Swiss media broke the story of a secret meeting between Malofeev, Dugin, and some right-wing political figures in Vienna; and just recently, it was reported that France’s Front National had borrowed a large sum from a Cyprus-based company called Veronisa Holdings, which happens to be owned by a KGB agent turned-banker named Yuri Kudimov.

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Disturbing Tweets from investigative website Exaro News. First, from 30 November:

Do not fall for smears against Exaro re CSA [child sexual abuse] survivors. We cannot discuss the arrangements that we make to ensure their safety and security. [LINK]

BTW the smears are coming from paedophiles as well as spooks. But some are one and the same. But they all know that the tide has turned.  [LINK]

And then today:

For the first time we are blocking some paedophiles and paedo-apologists who have engaged in extreme trolling to upset abuse survivors. [LINK]

… Not worth naming them. We do not want to give them publicity. [LINK]

Over the past few months, Exaro News has made a name for itself with a series of inter-related stories about an alleged paedophile ring involving senior politicians that supposedly operated with the collusion of the security services in the 1970s and 1980s. But in the above, the website has shifted – in an extraordinary casual and off-hand way – from investigating historic claims to making inflammatory accusations about people operating on Twitter today.

Exaro‘s most sensational claim appeared last month: that a survivor, named as “Nick”, had witnessed a then-serving Conservative Party MP “strangle a boy to death during a sexual assault” at an “abuse party”. Nick also claims  that a second boy was murdered by two unknown men in front of “a former Conservative cabinet minister” at a different event, and that a third boy had been “deliberately [run] over and killed” by a member of the gang. The timeline, for some reason, is slightly confused: the first murder took place “around 1980”, and the second one “between a year and 18 months” later; but the third – which Nick “took to be a warning” – is curiously dated to “the summer of 1979”.

Since November’s publication, I’ve seen several people on Twitter express scepticism about the story or raise misgivings about how Exaro and Nick are interacting with the police. I also note that one critic (involved with the contrarian “Spiked” group) is on record as having described Stuart Hall’s crimes as being “low-level”, and I can see how this might provoke a hostile “paedo-apologist” accusation. Further, there is one (anonymous) Twitter user who is approaching the issue in a way that is unpleasant and goading. But where’s the evidence of paedophiles “smearing” Exaro News on Twitter (or elsewhere)? And where’s the evidence of the remarkable claim that they are also “spooks”?

The published allegations about a “Conservative cabinet minister” are vague, but specific enough to allow anyone so inclined to make a short list of suspects. Similarly, these Tweets are vague enough to avoid proper scrutiny, but just specific enough to cast a shadow over anyone with reasonable and good-faith reservations about aspects of Exaro‘s approach.

That’s the effect. But as someone who supports “new media” and “citizen journalist” investigations into matters of public interest, I really hope it wasn’t the intention.

(Amended)

UPDATE: By way of a footnote, I would also like to note a couple of other recent Exaro Tweets that have caught my eye and set off alarm-bells: (1) an RT of a Tweet by another person responding to news that the site has been short-listed for a journalism award:

I should think the only people that won’t vote for you are paedophiles & the ‘cover uppers’!

Perhaps this was meant as a joke rather than as a serious proposition, but even if so it remains very ill-advised for Exaro to appear to endorse the sentiment.

And (2), an attack on Chris French for writing in the Guardian about false claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse (a subject I’ve discussed previously):

…He is, in total ignorance, casting doubt on Nick-type victims. SRA is a red herring icw Midland

The Guardian itself came under fire for publishing the piece after asking to speak to “Nick”.

I should perhaps make clear that this doesn’t mean that I think Exaro News should be dismissed out of hand – the case of Cyril Smith shows that a politician was able to get away with paedophilic abuse (although not, so far as we know, murder) in plain sight, and that the security services may have protected him (as others have suggested, perhaps in order to blackmail him).

Exaro also has testimony from ex-law enforcement officers that they were aware of “a significant paedophile group in Parliament” who were allegedly “untouchable”; these two (unnamed) officers apparently also claim to have been “aware that boys were being killed”, although no details are given as to what is meant by “aware” (saw bodies? heard rumours?). Obviously, that needs looking into.

One thing we’ve learnt over the past 12 years, following the first media revelations about historic sex abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in 2002, is that institutions have again and again facilitated the abuse of children, in some cases because of child protection failures and in others due to collusion. There is naturally widespread goodwill towards those who are investigating the issue, and anger against the thought of all those who escaped justice because they enjoyed positions of authority and trust.

But the spectre of Joseph McCarthy should remind us that it not good for any campaigning group or individual to be above criticism.

UPDATE 2019: “Nick” has now been revealed to be a man named Carl Beech. His allegations have been comprehensively exposed as lies, and he has been found guilty of perverting the course of justice and fraud. He was also found to be in possession of a collection of child-abuse images, and to have used a hidden camera to film the teenage friend of his son using a toilet. For more, see here.

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