Bartholomew's Notes

(Photo taken by Akin Akintayo, who has some scathing commentary here)

Nigeria’s Daily Times discusses recent birthday plans for James Ibori, former Governor of Delta State and currently serving 13 years in prison in the UK for committing massive fraud:

In a statement on Thursday, the James Ibori Political Associates (JIPA) said the celebration – ‘Birthday of Reconciliation’ will feature a “praise and worship service presided over by three eminent men of the cloth”.

Chairman and Secretary of the group, Thomas Ereyitomi, and Jaro Egbo, explained that “the South South Vice President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop God-Do-Well Avwomakpa, would be the guest preacher; while Rev Gbejero and Rev. Oyibo would also minister”.

A full page advert was taken out in a national daily to announce this celebration. In the advert, the former governor was described as “The Living Legend of Resource Control Struggle”.

Certainly, Ibori knows a thing or two about “resource control struggle”: he has admitted to stealing £50 million, and even that figure was described by the judge as being probably “ludicrously low”. Rev Oyibo is Gideon Oyibo, chairman of CAN in Delta State; Rev Gbejero is Stephen E. Gbejoro (sic for spelling), a local televangelist. The event was cancelled a few days after this report, due to the death of Ibori’s brother.

A similar event was held last year; Elombah reported:

The gathering marked Ibori’s birthday through speeches, prayers by several pastors and finally dancing as music was provided by a live band… Several pastors quoted the bible copiously to show that great men have suffered greatly in the hands of their enemies, only to be vindicated by God in the end. God will vindicate Ibori, they prayed God to save Ibori from the hands of his political enemies.

And the year before that, Gbejoro had given a thundering sermon at a birthday dinner, as reported in the Vanguard:

WARRI BENEFICIARIES of the philanthropic gestures of former Governor of Delta State, Chief James Ibori, who now exhibit greed and ingratitude should expect the wrath of God Almighty.

A Warri-based clergy, Rev. Stephen Gbejoro,  made this assertion, while speaking at a dinner organised by the Pro-Ibori Group to mark the 52nd birthday of the  embattled former Governor, saying, God always appreciates those who show gratitude for any assistance rendered to them by anybody.

Avwomakpa and Oyibo are also close to the current governor of Delta State, Emmanuel Uduaghan, who is Ibori’s cousin. Here’s an undated report (probably from 2008) on the Office of the Governor’s website:

In an exhortation, the state chairman of Christian Association Nigeria (CAN), Archbishop God-Do-Well Avwomakpa described Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan as a man who has emulated the biblical King David in a show of constant thankfulness to God.

The CAN Chairman, who admonished traditional rulers to always remove their head wears when in the presence of God as ‘Christ is the King of Kings’, said every man that honors God through thanksgiving must get the favour of the Almighty.

Uduaghan was a strong supporter of his relative and predecessor; an article byMichael Egbejumi-David at Sahara Reporters has some background detail:

…On 1 October 2007 when a court in London initially ruled that Ibori’s seized UK assets be released to him, same day, back in Government House, Uduaghan hurriedly arranged a thanksgiving service.  The usual suspects were all in attendance.  Leading that service was one Reverend God-do-well Avwomakpa, the then Delta State Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria.  During that service, Uduaghan announced that Ibori was a wealthy man before he became governor.  He added, quite heartlessly, that Ibori’s eight year sojourn in Government House impoverished the man as Ibori’s businesses suffered. 

This highlights the dynamic between political and religious “Big Men” in Nigeria; a profile of Uduaghan by Victor Sorokwu in the People Monthly (also undated, but probably early 2011) adds that:

Another strategy adopted by Governor Uduaghan in running the State is involving Christian and religious leaders as go-between government and the people. The governor had consulted and promised the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) that if reelected into office, he would consult Christian leaders from time to time in the governance of the state. An accord was thus reached between the governor and notable church leaders like the National President of CAN, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, the state Chairman of CAN, Arch-Bishop God-Do-Well Awomakpa, among others. Moreover, Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan has built a strong spiritual bond with the Archbishop Metropolitan and Primate of Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion, Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, whom he referred to as a strong spiritual pillar of his administration and a strong supporter of his leadership of the state.

CAN has received generous payback for its support; The Pointer reported in May that:

ENCOURAGED by the prudent management of the N50 million Micro-credit loan given by the Delta State Government to the state council of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) for the empowerment of its members, Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan has announced an additional N100 million micro-credit facility to the body.

…He also explained that the gesture informed the appointment of a Catholic Priest as Chairman of the State Scholarship Board, adding that “Christian’s worked hard to ensure that I become governor, so  I have no apology asking them to nominate people into government”.

…Speaking after administering  the relevant oath on the new Delta State CAN chairman, Rev. Gideon Oyibo, and members of his Executive,  South-South Chairman of CAN, Apostle Geofrey Numbere, urged them to improve on the achievements of the out-gone Executive, led by Archbishop God-Do-well  Avwomakpa.

Footnote

The latest issue of Private Eye magazine (1320) has a long special report by Richard Brooks on how Ibori laundered millions of pounds through British banks, despite safeguards which should have triggered warnings:

The relentless deposits of cash at HSBC branches across the capital, accompanied by transfers to the accounts of somebody known to be a “politically exposed person” (PEP), and thus subject to even greater levels of scrutiny, would not have survived the most cursory inspection and ought to have raised the alarm at HSBC and Barclays… Instead British high street banks facilitated the most sumptuous lifestyles at the expense of the Nigerian people.

Apparently the HSBC branch at East Ham “proved particularly receptive, swallowing up £90,000 cash over eight days in December 2003, including £35,800 on a single visit”.

The Eye also notes a “bizarre intervention” made by Tony Baldry MP in 2010. Baldry

…wrote – in his capacity as a barrister – to the then foreign secretary David Miliband on the instructions of one of Ibori’s solicitors, Sarosh Zaiwalla. Baldry’s own libel solicitor, later objecting to a blogger’s reference to the story, described the letter’s purpose as pointing out that once the case was resolved ‘relevant agencies might want to reflect on lessons learned’.

The blogger was Richard Wilson, who writes more about the matter here. Baldry wanted it made clear he had acted for Ibori in his capacity as a barrister, rather than as an MP; the Independent on Sunday had issued an apology for incorrectly suggesting Baldry had engaged in “lobbying”. Richard draws attention to some commentary from the time by David Allen Green in the Lawyer.

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A story from Grand Rapids, via J. Bennett Rylah (H/T Ed Brayton):

At the moment when I walked into Gay Day this past Saturday, it was surreal, like some kind of charming French romance… But, OH, we couldn’t have that for long. A group of protestors showed up to harass from the other side of a chain link fence. They came armed with Bibles. And it wasn’t the usual, “repent or go to Hell.” Rather, it was the decree that all races would war against each other and the losers would have their women ravished. Which, according to one of the vitrolic protestors meant, “you ass is gonna get raped.”

The above video shows the “preachers” making a specific threat to rape, and crudely warning a woman to keep her “pussy clean” for “when it happens”.

All Michigan has further details:

The non-profit Tolerance, Equality and Awareness Movement, or TEAM, has posted a letter to its Web site urging police to prosecute unidentified protesters who allegedly made rape and death threats at the event organized by the East Hills Council of Neighbors to celebrate the community’s diversity.

…TEAM posted to its Web site a YouTube video of what appears to be a protester using an ancient Bible prophecy about Babylon to justify raping a Gay Day participant. (Caution: the video clip contains foul language).

It shouldn’t be too difficult for the police to identify the protestors, since their robes and posters as shown in a photo on the All Michigan website reveal them to be members of a Hebrew Israelite group: most distinctively, one of the group’s signs shows a traditional white American devotional portrait of Jesus, to which has been added horns and the commentary (in English and Spanish): “THIS IS THE DEVIL / THIS IMAGE IS NOT BIBLICAL / JESUS IS A NEGRO NOT A WHITEMAN”.

The same poster was seen by blogger Zomblog in Berkeley in 2009, and there are other examples on-line, including this one from Dallas. The bottom corner of the poster incorporates a second portrait, traditionally thought to be of Cesare Borgia; Hebrew Israelites believe that mainstream images of Jesus are based on his face.

A photographer uploaded a photo of the preachers in Grand Rapids last October; one of the men in the photo holds a painting of some UFOs, declared to be “THE CHARIOTS OF GOD”. Videos of preaching in Grand Rapids have also been uploaded to Daily Motion by a member of the group using the name “riseofisrael”.

The SPLC has some general background to the movement:

Around the country, thousands of men and women have joined black supremacist groups on the extremist fringe of the Hebrew Israelite movement, a black nationalist theology that dates back to the 19th century.

Since 2000, when the prophecy of a key leader failed to materialize (he predicted Christ would return to Earth at the dawn of the new millennium to wreak bloody vengeance on white people), the rhetoric of extremist Hebrew Israelites sects has been steadily heating up, with increasing talk of an impending apocalypse and God-ordained race war. At the same time, a magnetic young leader, who counts among his disciples the lead singer of a top-selling R&B group, emerged and rapidly expanded a movement that was previously concentrated in black inner-city neighborhoods on the East Coast. There are now extremist Hebrew Israelite churches in cities throughout Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Oregon.

Confrontations between Hebrew Israelite street preachers and their perceived enemies are growing uglier and gaining increasing attention through video clips circulated to legions of viewers on websites like YouTube…

In June, the leader of a Black Hebrew sect pleaded guilty to killing a four-year old boy in 2010 “because he thought the child was gay”.

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On-line thug Charlie Flowers fantasises about Tim Ireland being shot in the head:

‘Ermmmmm… ah. That’s Tom Wales, the guy that used to stalk women MPs. Someone kill him please.’
Duckie walked forward. Tom Wales had reached the window and was trying to lever himself out over the ledge. She pulled a pistol from her waistband and tapped him on the back.
‘Oi. You. You sappy little mug.’
He rolled onto his back and started to beg. She shot him in the right eye.

The above formed part of a gun massacre fantasy recently posted to Facebook, which I discussed here; it was just the latest outburst in a long campaign of attempted intimidation which has followed from Tim’s discovery that individuals involved with a now-defunct self-styled “on-line terror tracker” outfit called the VIGIL Network were dishonest (full story here; I’ve also been targeted).

The claim that Tim “used to stalk women MPs” is of course a libel, derived from Nadine Dorries; Dorries frequently cries “stalker” when her performance as an MP is subjected to critical scrutiny, and the list of those she has reported to the police includes her Liberal Democrat rival at the last election.

In 2010, Dorries complained to police about Tim’s non-disruptive presence at an election hustings at Flitwick, to which he had been invited by constituents, and with consent of the organisers, to film the event. Tim subsequently spoke with police voluntarily; they confirmed that he had done nothing wrong, but warned him that Dorries’ (supposed) perception of his presence in Flitwick meant that “others could construe this type of behaviour as harassment or stalking”.

Dorries deliberately misrepresented this to suggest that police regarded Tim as someone who had broken the law. Dorries’ interpretation was then promoted by the Conservative blogger Iain Dale; one would have thought that any half-decent blogger/journalist would be alarmed and sceptical at an MP using the police in this way, but Dale also hates Tim and has previously deployed the “stalker” smear himself. Flowers has explicitly referenced Dale, while Dorries has made public and private use of a smear site created by VIGIL’s former director. This site has posted private information about where Tim lives, and its owner subsequently posted a fantasy in which Tim and I are run over by a car.

Tim reminded Dale of all this yesterday, on Twitter:

Asked @IainDale to retract false claims he published that have been used to legitimise ‘joking’ death threats against me. So far: nothing (1)

Followed by:

Try to imagine how that liar/hypocrite @IainDale would react if I published a story about my shooting @NadineDorriesMP trhough the brain. (2)

This second tweet was then picked up on by the conservative activist Harry Cole, who used it out of context to allege that Tim was making a threat against Dorries:

The much loved Bloggerheads ladies and gentleman. Tweeting about shooting Dorries in the head (3)

This was then RT-ed by Dorries herself. It should be remembered that although Dorries is an ordinary backbencher who has achieved nothing special as a public servant, she has managed to carve out an exceptionally high and self-perpetuating media profile as a “rent-a-quote” MP; a recent Tweet in which she expressed her view that William Hague ought to replace George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer unaccountably even made it onto the BBC News channel’s “Breaking News” ribbon.

Cole, it should be recalled, has a history of unpleasant on-line behaviour: when one of Tim’s stalkers contacted him with bogus information, Cole had the good sense to realise it was nonsense but went on to make use of it anyway, by claiming that it must have been sent by Tim as a “sting”. When the true situation was explained to him, he refused to share metadata that might have been of use to police, and then obtusely claimed that he was himself now being unfairly accused of making a threat. Prior to that incident, he was probably the channel through which a smear directed against disabled woman who had criticised Dorries appeared on Paul Staines’ blog.

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Pamela Geller describes Saturday’s “Counter-Jihad” rally in Stockholm:

…What has emerged from an intense forty-eight hour strategy session is the first activist leadership team uniting counter-jihadists in Europe, the U.S., and Australia: the President’s Council of Stop Islamization of Nations (SION).

The initial members of the President’s Council are SIOE’s Anders Gravers; Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll of the EDL; Debbie Robinson of the Q Society of Australia, Robert Spencer and me. The members of the newly formed council unanimously voted to elect me Council President. I am honored. This is a momentous beginning to what I am confident will become a powerful force for defending freedom worldwide.

No surprises there, then – the “Q Society” and Debbie Robinson are less-known than the other figures, but Robert Spencer is the organisation’s “International Patron” and he was brought to Australia by the group at the end of last year. Hope Not Hate also lists Walid Shoebat as being a patron, although there is no evidence of this on the Q Society website.

The Q Society was founded in late 2010 to save Australia from “Islamisation”; although the organisation appears to be secular, its president, a man named Geoff Dickson, interprets Islam through his own religious beliefs. This can be seen from his articles on Australian Islamist Monitor, where he explains that:

The world is perhaps not far off from solving one of the great mysteries in revealing the true identity of the promised AntiChrist that was predicted in the Bible in the Book of Revelation around 100AD and which can be shown to be entwined with Islamic prophecy. Islam is awaiting the rise of the Caliphate which was killed off in 1924 by Mustafa Ataturk.

…The seventh century BC prophet Isaiah named Satan / Lucifer as “Hilal ben Sahar” in Isaiah 14:12 and it is translated in English as Lucifer, son of Dawn. However Hilal means “shining one” in Hebrew and “Moon crescent” in Ethopian.

…The black stone of Mecca is clearly an image of Satan/Allah.

…Islam is indeed the product of Satan and should be opposed by all free thinking people.

However, Dickson’s commitment to “free thinking” is somewhat limited: he also calls for Islam to be banned outright.

Dickson’s religious views are derived from Walid Shoebat and Joel Richardson – Spencer has also provided the cover blurbs for Richardson’s apocalyptic screeds, although it’s doubtful he shares such beliefs. It’s possible that Dickson’s religious views is why Geller’s “President’s Council” has opted for a link-up with one of Dickson’s deputies, rather than the man himself.

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From the Daily Mail:

An evangelist who kicks followers in the face, claiming his violence will cure them of cancer, is to tour Britain this month – but his proposed visit has provoked outrage and demands that he be banned from entering the country.

Tattooed preacher Todd Bentley, who as a 15-year-old was convicted of a sex attack on a boy aged seven, claims God uses him as an instrument to heal the sick, and is urging the frail to attend his shows.

Bentley rose to widespread prominence during 2008, when he was at the centre of the “Lakeland Revival” at Ignited Church in Florida. I blogged about his claims at the time, and noted endorsements from neo-Pentecostal leaders such as Rick Joyner and C. Peter Wagner (Wagner enthused that “a new supernatural strength will flow through this ministry”). Alas, in August 2008 it was announced by Bentley’s Board of Directors that he had “entered into an unhealthy relationship on an emotional level with a female member of his staff”; further meetings were cancelled, and he has maintained a lower profile since then.

Bentley’s reputation for kicking people in the face derives from an anecdote that he himself related to an audience in 2008, concerning one woman; it is not his regular practice, although the Mail notes that

In one show he treated a man claiming to be suffering from colon cancer by planting his knee hard into the victim’s stomach. The man fell to the floor in agony.

On another occasion, a man was pushed over so forcefully that he lost a tooth.

His visit to the UK is due to begin at Croydon, and the the local MP, Malcolm Wicks (Labour), has predictably called for him to be banned from entering the country. There’s also input from Peter May (whom some may remember from his high-profile opposition to Morris Cerullo in 1992):

Peter May, a prominent Christian GP who served for 25 years on the Church of England’s ruling General Synod, and has investigated spurious faith healers for more than 20 years, said: ‘I’m concerned by Todd Bentley’s methods because a physical injury on any sick person could be very serious…’

However, it should be noted that Bentley previously visited the UK towards the end of last year; there is no evidence that anyone came to harm, although some may perhaps doubt Bentley’s claim that “we had people raised from the dead”.

Last year’s visit began at the Two Locks Church in Cwmbran (the church’s website carries a photo of church’s pastor, Robert King, with Bentley), and then moved on to a leisure centre in Horsham, at the invitation of the Glory Company (“led by Matthew and Pearl Nagy”). According to this group’s website:

On the second night of Todd Bentley’s Horsham debut last December, Todd presented a word from the Lord on a ‘critical spirit’ that he sensed pervading the spiritual atmosphere in the Southeast.

The Mail article comes in the wake of a piece in This is Croydon from mid-July:

Controversial pastor Todd Bentley, who was convicted of a sex attack on a seven-year-old when he was 14, is to hold a three-day event at Croydon Conference Centre, in Surrey Street, in August.

…The healing session was listed on the website of Folly’s End Community Fellowship Trust, which hires out the conference centre, and the church is mentioned on Bentley’s promotional material as a co-host, but pastor Dave Markee said this was a mistake and the church has nothing to do with the event.

In contrast to this not-quite “I know not the man”, a notice since removed from the Folly’s End website had the following:

3 Nights of Healing and Impartation with Todd Bentley

Folly’s End is delighted to have Todd Bentley here in the UK for 3 nights of supernatural healing and impartation.

The last time Todd was in the UK in December 2011, he packed 250 people into a 220 seater, and he prayed for every single person in the venue.

It was beautiful. He was so humble and vulnerable about the past, and so ready to return to ministry. He was in great form, and there were many notable healings and much deliverance. We look forward to seeing what happens this time! Be prepared and expectant! We just know that last time was the breaker for this next visit!

For more information, please go to:

http://www.freshfireusa.com/events/view/539-Croydon-England

A strange mistake – and Markee, like Bentley, enjoys the endorsement of Rick Joyner (Joyner is also a serious player within the US Christian Right, as discussed here). However, Bentley’s website makes it clear that it is indeed again “The Glory Company” that is hosting him in Croydon.

According to Bentley’s website, he will arrive in Croydon following a session in Norway hosted by Unitas Revival Mission and a certain Bjarne Bugge Solvik. Following on from Croydon, he will be at the Portadown Christian Centre (co-hosted by Haven International Ministries), and then at Liverpool (the website of “Together Ministries” is given), and again at Two Locks in Wales. After a return to the USA, he is then heading off to Pakistan.

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Two days from now will see Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer consolidate links with the English Defence League at the “Worldwide Counter-Jihad Meeting” in Stockholm. The local Swedish Defence League will also be providing a couple of speakers at the event; Islamophobia Watch has cast an eye over them:

The leading figure in the SDL, who has acted as the group’s spokesman, represented it at the EDL’s Aarhus protest in March, and according to the Swedish anti-fascist magazine Expo has been directly involved in organising the Stockholm demonstration, is an individual named Isak Nygren…

Back in 2008 Nygren reportedly applied for membership of the neo-Nazi Nordiska förbundet but eventually joined the Sweden Democrats, becoming an SD councillor in Katrineholm. Nygren’s budding career in the party came to an abrupt end last year, however, when Expo published a comment he had posted on a discussion thread at a far-right internet forum that addressed the question “Why is race mixing bad?”…

Further:

The SDL’s platform speaker in Stockholm, according to the EDL news report, is one Richard Abrams. He has a blog called Chamber of manifestation which shows him to be a fervent admirer of Nazi occultism. Along with the proud announcement that he will be representing the SDL at Saturday’s rally, Abrams reports that “Me and some friends are fighting a struggle; RECLAIM THE SWASTIKA!” (“If you want US to respect OTHER cultures, you must also respect OUR culture and its symbols”). And just in case you were in any doubt where his political sympathies lie, Abrams reproduces a quotation from Nazi intellectual Alfred Rosenberg (“The old beliefs will be brought back to honor again. The whole secret knowledge of nature, of the divine, the demonic. We will wash off the Christian veneer and bring out a religion peculiar to our race. The religion of the blood”)

[UPDATE: As Apuleius Platonicus notes in the comments, the quote attributed to Rosenberg is not authentic. A look on Google Books and Amazon shows that it has been derived from statements attributed to Hitler on page 55 of The Voice of Destruction: Conversations With Hitler 1940, by Hermann Rauschning. The author claimed to have written down statements made privately by Hitler, although mainstream scholars today either doubt or dismiss the book’s credibility.]

Islamophobia Watch also draws attention to a jokey picture posted to the SDL Stockholm Division Facebook page on 23 July; it is a photo of Ander Breivik rubbing his eyes in court, giving the appearance of crying; a large caption has been added: “That’s when I ran out of bullets”. That should amuse the EDL’s Tommy Robinson, who has been known to joke about the mass killer.

Abrams’ website is for the most part macabre and disturbing: among weird occultic images we find statements such as “I will be remembered as the one who beheaded presidents in righteous wrath”. He is also a musician, sometimes using the fuller name “Richard Isak Abrams”. According to a blurb for his band on LastFM:

Iblis Industries (or 1blis 1ndustries) is a Swedish project created in 2005 by Richard Abrams (also in Sitra Ahra and Hypothermia.)

The music released so far consists of a variey of elements such as; Neoclassical, Downtempo, Black metal, Industrial and Noisestep.

The themes of Iblis Industries is mainly cultivated in a search for the divine embers.

Of course, a provocative interest in the grotesque and and the dark is par for the course with this kind of music, and it is unclear how far one can extrapolate from stage persona to political identification. However, for an organisation seeking wider credibility, the impression given by Abrams’ site is unattractive. And given the links between the self-described “Counter-Jihad Movement” and elements of the Christian Right, such an association is likely to be awkward.

UPDATE (4 August): Some publicity materials for the event (including Geller’s blog) list “Richard Abrahamsson” rather than “Abrams”, while the European Freedom Initiative website has scrubbed all mention of him under either name (access to cache has been blocked, but his name can still be seen in the Google preview). Abrams has also scrubbed his announcement from his Chamber of Manifestation website.

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Oh noes! Pamela Geller writes:

I could not help but notice, over the past few years, the right wing blogosphere’s silence on jihad and Islam….

The first jolt and obvious disconnect was back in 2008, when Michelle Malkin and Hot Air suddenly and without explanation stopped running Robert Spencer’s “Blogging the Quran” series and his Jihad Watch v-logs… These were just some early signs of a decision by the most influential people on the Right to sanction the jihad and sharia with their silence.

…But this is not about just Michelle Malkin — not by a long shot. I wrote about her because the evidence in her case is fairly clear. But it is also about all of them: Drudge, Rush, Kathryn Lopez of National Review, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, etc.

This kind of implosion is the usual climax of the demagogue’s career.

Geller’s main target is a right-wing website called Weasel Zippers. Geller has received correspondence from “a blogger” who had written for the site:

In December 2010, XXXX decided to tone down XXXX and make it more like a Hot Air style site. He told me to stop insulting Islam because he wanted to attract advertising and make a living from doing XXXX…

Here are some examples of old XXXX posts of mine that XXXX censored/scrubbed from his site:…

“Obama Remembers Muslim Victims of 9/11 at White House Ramadan Dinner…”

He deleted my picture of Obama at a White House dinner holding up a glass to toast someone. Obama had an evil look on his face. Offensive to Muslims?

Geller confirmed that “XXXX” refers to Weasel Zippers following a post by “BigFurHat”, a conservative satirist who created Geller’s logo for SIOA. Geller’s associate Robert Spencer then wrote that:

Zip and I had once been friendly and actually had been planning to meet again for lunch when he wrote me and asked me to stop linking his posts at Jihad Watch, because then when Pamela Geller would link my posts, a link to his site would show up at Atlas Shrugs, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with her because of her exposure of Rick Perry’s Islam curriculum. When I responded incredulously, he grew progressively more abusive, finally ending up by repeating the Leftist/Islamic supremacist smear that I was responsible for the Norway murders. He still does cover jihad issues at Weasel Zippers, but not in a way that would trouble anyone who buys the propaganda line, purveyed by both Leftists and Fox, that Islam is a Religion of Peace that has been Hijacked by a Tiny Minority of Extremists.

But all is not lost. Geller has new friends, and will shortly be formalizing her association with the English Defence League.

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Last year, I noted a long report in the Washington Monthly about the quality of counter-terrorism training being given to US law-enforcement agencies. Among those discussed critically in the article was a certain John Giduck, a lawyer who has worked in Russia:

…He claims to have trained with multiple Russian special forces units, and to be certified by the “Vityaz Special Forces Anti-Terror School.” In 2004, Giduck traveled to Russia immediately after the Beslan school massacre and wrote a book called Terror at Beslan. It was published in 2005, and it raised Giduck’s profile, earning him a guest appearance on the Glenn Beck show in the fall of 2007. Among the book’s most sensational allegations is that the terrorists at Beslan systematically raped their hostages, a claim that no other primary source account has made. In the meantime, Giduck has also become an in-demand counterterrorism trainer.

However:

When we wanted to know more about Giduck’s time with the Russian special forces, Giduck wrote back to say that he had done a “series of trainings with Vityaz [a unit of Spetsnaz, the Russian special forces] at their special forces compound and training school on the Balashikha Army Base about 30 miles east of Moscow from 1999 to 2004″ and had had close access to a series of elite Russian units, including Rus, another Spetsnaz division. When we made inquiries at the Russian Interior Ministry, we were informed that Giduck had not trained with Vityaz. Instead, he took a commercial course in extreme survival skills, with no counterterrorism component. Representatives from Rus said they had never heard of Giduck.

Giduck was subsequently defended in an article by Major Joseph M. Bail, Jr. (ret.), a recently retired police officer from the City of Chester, Pennsylvania PD. His piece was entitled “Dispelling the Falsehoods of Washington Monthly Magazine: How the Liberal, Left Wing Media Lies To Destroy Our Mission and our Men”, and it accused the article’s authors, Meg Stalcup and Joshua Craze, of being part of a Muslim conspiracy:

One must ask the question of whether articles of this nature are attempting to point out the shortcomings of current terrorism training or is it the practice of taqiyya (Islamic Principle of Lying for the Sake of Allah).

Bail’s “rebuttal” was promoted by Brad Thor at Big Government; Thor (who has accused me of “utter nilihism” for expressing scepticism of his May 2010 “Mullah Omar Captured” story) had previously narrated an audio-book version of Giduck’s The Green Beret in You. Stalcup and Craze in turn responded to Bail’s piece, assuring readers that “we are not covert Muslims attempting to wage a war on America”.

Meanwhile, Giduck has also come under critical scrutiny on a discussion website called SOCNET, which is billed as “The Special Operations Community Network”. In response to this, Giduck has now filed a lawsuit in Colorado against SOCNET users (Case number 12CV128), in which he complains:

“Defendants’ campaign has been successful and largely destroyed Giduck’s ability to be hired as a lecturer/speaker’ teacher. The campaign has drastically reduced the number of lectures/presentation for which Giduck/Archangel were hired and eviscerated their earnings. The campaign has caused Giduck and Archangel to lose nearly $500,000 in annual profits.

“Archangel” refers to Giduck’s company, the “Archangel Group”.

Popehat has surveyed Giduck’s complaint:

In the complaint, Giduck claims that people on SocNet have falsely accused him of posing as things he is not — including a former member of Special Forces. Giduck’s position seems to be that he’s never said he was in the Special Forces; he just markets himself as someone very knowledgeable about Special Forces, someone you should hire to lecture and consult about them. He also asserts there is a conspiracy to ruin him and his lecturing/consulting business, that SocNet commenters called for him to be ruined, and that SocNet commenters called for attacks on him and his wife, resulting in his tires being slashed.

…The complaint mixes allegations about false statements of fact that could plausibly be defamation (like asserting that the defendants accused Giduck of making false claims of being a Special Forces soldier) with allegations directed at statements of opinion that are obviously protected by the First Amendment (like calling Giduck a “creepy-ass dummy” or “moron.”…

A member of SOCNET has also left a comment on this blog, which I have removed due in living in a jurisdiction notorious for “libel tourism”. The comment made a number of troubling allegations about Giduck’s conduct, and that of his associates.

Giduck’s defenders have created a website entitled SoCnetLies, which accuses SOCNET of functioning

as (anonymous) judge, jury and executioner over the professional and personal reputations of those they decide to attack.

In response, there is a site entitled Thetruthaboutsocnetlies (sic):

John Giduck is a public figure considering he is an author and national security/school safety consultant.  Many of John Giduck’s associates have also made themselves public figures. This site uses a combination of truth, opinion, and satire all of which are protected speech with regards to public officials.  If you don’t like what you read, please go to another website.

This site includes a document which is alleged to be Giduck’s US army record; it states that he was discharged after serving for two months in 1987.

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From the Christian Post, March 2012:

Rick Warren Guiding Rwanda’s New Leaders, Calls Nation His ‘Other Home’

At a prayer breakfast at Kigali Serena Hotel on Sunday, March 18, Warren spoke to Rwanda’s spiritual leaders along with several government officials, including Prime Minister Dr. Pierre Damien Habumuremyi.

…”Rwanda is now a model for Africa and in the next 10 years, it will be a model for the rest of the world. This country is also blessed with an uncommon leader who is full of integrity,” the evangelical pastor said.

…Warren is also a member of President Kagame’s Presidential Advisory Council.

From Reuters, 19 June 2012:

The U.N. panel of experts on Congo is due to publish an interim report soon that international diplomats say appears to have information backing up reports of rebels receiving support from Rwanda.

[Congolese government spokesman Lambert] Mende told Reuters on Monday that Rwanda and its allies on the Security Council, including Washington, were trying to block the report.

“I think (the report) confirms everything that has been said. I don’t think the Rwandans are at all happy that it should be officially endorsed by the U.N,” he said. Washington was not immediately available for comment.

The report’s material on Rwanda, which appeared as an addendum to the main report (reference number S/2012/348), was finally published at the end of June.

Just over a week ago, it was reported that the US intended to “cut military aid to Rwanda for this year because of evidence by U.N. experts that Kigali was supporting rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo”, while the Netherlands and and the UK have delayed making aid payments. Further, the Guardian  reported that:

Stephen Rapp, who leads the US Office of Global Criminal Justice, told the Guardian the Rwandan leadership may be open to charges of “aiding and abetting” crimes against humanity in a neighbouring country – actions similar to those for which the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, was jailed for 50 years by an international court in May.

However, the ICC has since clarified that “investigations into the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were not focused on Rwanda nor its leadership, but on the crimes against humanity allegedly committed by forces loyal to renegade General Bosco Ntaganda.”

Rwanda has responded with a “rebuttal”, claiming that Rwandan army uniforms worn by fighters in Congo could have been purchased from foreign marketplaces, but Kagame is coming under critical media scrutiny.

Of course, Rick Warren wasn’t to know about events in Congo, but his lack of any critical distance from Kagame (see, for example, this gushing 2009 profile he wrote for Time) was always likely to lead to difficulties. It should be recalled that Warren’s words of praise in March followed reports in May 2011 that Rwandan exiles in London had been warned by police of assassination threats, and the mysterious attempted murder of a Rwandan former general in Johannesburg in 2010.

Another international advisor to Kagame is Tony Blair, who attended a previous Warren prayer meeting at the Kigali Serena in 2009 (Warren has also dispensed his “PEACE medal” awards to Blair and Kagame). Back in December 2010, Blair told the Guardian that:

“I’m a believer in and a supporter of Paul Kagame. I don’t ignore all those criticisms, having said that. But I do think you’ve got to recognise that Rwanda is an immensely special case because of the genocide. Secondly, you can’t argue with the fact that Rwanda has gone on a remarkable path of development. Every time I visit Kigali and the surrounding areas you can just see the changes being made in the country.”

Footnote

Kagame is not the only controversial leader to enjoy a relationship with Tony Blair; Nick Cohen recently noted Blair’s links to Nursultan Nazarbayev:

He won’t explain why he’s helping the Kazakh dictator present a better face to the west. Apparently, he has said that he is not personally profiting from appearing in a propaganda video praising the dictatorship’s “progress” and hymning its “extraordinary economic potential”.

So far, there is no connection between Nazarbayev and Warren, despite Nazarbayev’s interest in “religious leaders”.

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I’m a few days late with this; from the Independent:

Monks who played a vital role in Burma’s recent struggle for democracy have been accused of fuelling ethnic tensions in the country by calling on people to shun a Muslim community that has suffered decades of abuse.

…The outburst against the Rohingya, often described as one of the world’s most oppressed groups, comes after weeks of ethnic violence in the Rakhine state in the west of Burma that has left more than 80 dead and up to 100,000 people living in a situation described as “desperate” by humanitarian organisations. 

…The Young Monks’ Association of Sittwe and Mrauk Oo Monks’ Association have both released statements in recent days urging locals not to associate with the group. 

…Aid workers report ongoing threats and interference by local nationalist and religious groups. Some monasteries in Maungdaw and Sittwe sheltering displaced Rakhine people have openly refused to accept international aid, alleging that it is “biased” in favour of the Rohingya. 

…Monks’ leader Ashin Htawara [var. Ashin Htarwara] recently encouraged the government to send the group “back to their native land” at an event in London hosted by the anti-Rohingya Burma Democratic Concern. Ko Ko Gyi, a democracy activist with the 88 Generation Students group and a former political prisoner, said: “The Rohingya are not a Burmese ethnic group. The root cause of the violence… comes from across the border.”

Htarwara is General Secretary, All Burma Monks Representative Committees (ABMRC).

Human Rights Watch reported on the general background on 5 July:

Burmese security forces have responded to sectarian violence in northern Arakan State with mass arrests and unlawful force against the Rohingya Muslim population, Human Rights Watch said today. Local police, the military, and a border security force known as Nasaka have committed numerous abuses in predominantly Muslim townships while combating the violence between the Rohingya and ethnic Arakan, who are predominantly Buddhist, that broke out in early June 2012.

…Burmese security forces have been implicated in killings and other abuses since the sectarian violence in northern Arakan State began, Human Rights Watch said.

…The recent sectarian violence began after an ethnic Arakan woman was allegedly raped and killed by three Muslim men on Ramri island in southern Arakan State in late May, which was followed by the June 3 killing of 10 Muslims by an Arakan mob in Toungop. On June 8, thousands of Rohingya rioted in the town of Maungdaw, destroying Arakan property and causing an unknown number of deaths. Groups of Rohingya subsequently committed killings and other violence elsewhere in the state, burning down Arakan homes and villages. Arakan groups, in some cases with the collusion of local authorities and police, committed violence against Rohingya communities, including killings and beatings, and burning down Muslim homes and villages.

According to the International Business Times, the three men were convicted and sentenced to death in June (one of the three had committed suicide, and so his sentence was handed down posthumously).

Burma Democratic Concern has a somewhat chaotically-organised website here, and it includes an article called “Prominent 8888 [sic] Generation Students Leaders Spoke on Rohingya and the Current Riots in Burma”. It’s difficult to judge the overall tone; on the one hand, one statement calls for calm:

It is the most important to prevent the incitement that would cause riots and bloodshed among citizens. Therefore, I don’t want anyone to name the current events as riots between Muslims and Buddhists… . It is time to protect each other. It is time to protect the minority by the majority. If they not only protect each other and if they not only threaten each other, if they even take lives and destroy the public property, do not save any face.

Another, however, claims that:

The killing and arson have been done a clearly deliberate plan to drive out the native people from their national home after fighting a genocidal war. For that reason, we are advocating your attention and appropriate action from the international community.

The current violence they incited has been very tactful too. It occurred a few weeks before Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s departure for European trip. Their intent is to create an access for their activists in Europe to see Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and put her under a pressure with the help of their European supporters and to ask on Rohingas problem. But there was no success.

The site also draws attention to several photos unrelated to the conflict that have been used on social media as examples of Rohingya suffering (somewhat over-dramatically, the site claims that these have “tricked” the “world’s media”).

Also based in London is the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation, which has its website here. According to an “Appeal” page on the site:

…The Rohingya and Rakhine are indigenous to Arakan and therefore to present day Burma. Before 1785 AD, Arakan existed as an independent nation for many centuries where Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim Rohingya coexisted peacefully. We will work to re-establish the traditional relationship of peaceful-coexistence that existed in the past between the Rohingya Arakanese and the Rakhine Arakanese peoples, and to promote a shared sense of being Arakanese among all peoples of Arakan.

…We are not part of any struggle outside Burma and are committed as a community within Arakan to rebuild the State. Our vision for the future is a diverse, tolerant, multi-ethnic, multi-religious Arakan society.

In the USA, news that the riots had been triggered by a crime by Muslims was met with pyromaniac glee by Pam Geller, who declared the killing to have been an act of “jihad”; a week before that, she opined that the violence was the inevitable result of “Muslim immigration”. No surprises there, then – and I noted her similar support for militant anti-Muslim monks in Sri Lanka in May.

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