Bartholomew's Notes

As has been widely reported, the English Defence League has entered into a formal association with a fringe-right political party, the British Freedom Party. The Gates of Vienna blog quotes “Gaia”, who was present the “EDL Way Forward Meeting” in Birmingham where the announcement was made:

[Stephen Yaxley-Lennon] proposed an association between the EDL and BF. He had nothing but praise for [BF Chairman] Paul Weston, “who has charisma, can speak well, and is a jolly good bloke!” He said they got on well with each other and could work together.

…Tommy may elect to join British Freedom, but this is an opportunity for EDL members to move over to BF and for the first time provide input and promote the views of the British working class within a British political party.

This follows a “counterjihad leadership summit” in London in September:

A number of people associated with ICLA [International Civil Liberties Alliance] were present, including Paul Weston, Aeneas, Gaia, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, KGS of Tundra Tabloids, Henrik Ræder Clausen of Europe News (English), Liz of Europe News (Deutsch), and other activists from North America and Western Europe. There were representatives from Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and the USA.

The importance of the meeting was underscored by the presence of several leaders of the English Defence League. Tommy Robinson, Kevin Carroll, and Jack Smith were among those who conferred for the first time with a cross-section of the European Counterjihad.

This was just a few days after Weston had joined the British Freedom Party and joined its executive council; the BFP was also represented by “Peter Mullins, Lee Barnes, Simon Bennett and George Whale”. Mullins, Barnes, and Bennett are all ex-BNP,and as Islamophobia Watch notes, they have now stepped into the background:

No doubt partly in order to remove any obstruction to an alliance with the EDL, but more importantly to assist the BFP’s bid for wider electoral support, the ex-BNP activists recently resigned their positions and were replaced by individuals with no known fascist background. 

Weston was formerly with UKIP, and he was elected chairman of the BFP just a couple of weeks ago. Back in March, he was part of a delegation of European rightists to Israel – he and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff gave speeches at a “small museum honoring Gush Katif”. He has also described himself as a representative of the International Free Press Society – James Cohen of the EDL Jewish Division is also involved with this organisation.

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From Right Wing Watch:

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins today had Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on his radio show Washington Watch Weekly to discuss their recent trip to Israel with a delegation that also included congressmen Louie Gohmert (R-TX), John Fleming (R-LA), Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and Randy Forbes (R-VA). Perkins and Jordan recounted their meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which included Gohmert knocking over Netanyahu’s coffee cup when he “presented the Prime Minister with the latest novel from Joel Rosenberg”.

…Joel Rosenberg is a Christian author who primarily writes about the End Times and frequently shares his thoughts with Glenn Beck. His latest novel describes a future time when Iran has a nuclear weapon and “[m]illions of Muslims around the world are convinced their messiah—known as ‘the Twelfth Imam’—has just arrived on earth.” Christianbook.com says that Rosenberg’s novel “combines the action and exquisite detail of Tom Clancy with the tense religious drama of Left Behind.”

Rosenberg is a familiar figure on the apocalyptic Christian Right: he is the author of numerous thrillers based on his understandings of Bible prophecy and middle east politics, and in 2008 he organised a conference in Jerusalem involving the likes of Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin and ex-CIA director Porter Goss (Goss provided a recorded message). The book which Gohmert (who himself came to wider attention last year when he raised the spectre of a Muslim “terror baby” conspiracy)  gave to Netanyahu was entitled The Tehran Initiative, and it purports to answer the question: “What if the world waits too long and Iran’s apocalyptic leaders finally build nuclear weapons?”

While the idea of a US politician handing over an apocalyptic paperback to the prime minister of Israel may appear bizarre and risible, it should be noted that Netanyahu knows the book’s author already: Rosenberg was formerly his adviser (a distinction Netanyahu shares with Rush  Limbaugh and Steve Forbes).

Also, there’s a long tradition of Israeli officials indulging the pretensions of Christian Right prophecy potboiler hacks: back in 2006, John Hagee’s Jerusalem Countdown was advertised as containing “detailed information that Hagee has received from top Israeli government officials concerning a nuclear showdown between Iran and Israel”, and Mike Evans has met with several Israeli prime ministers.

In 1989, Hal Lindsey boasted in The Road to Holocaust about his 1970 bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth:

The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, was reading it shortly before he died. Since everything in his room has been kept the way it was before he died, a copy of The Late Great Planet Earth remains on his desk. A friend of mine who is one of Israel’s top military commanders passed out hundreds of copies of the Hebrew translation to the Israeli Defence forces, even though he personally hasn’t as yet believed in Jesus as the Messiah.

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From the Moscow News:

The Belt of Our Blessed Virgin Mary, visiting from Athos, Greece, is to receive pilgrims from 10 am on Saturday, Nov. 19, in Christ the Savior Cathedral….

…The relic has seen huge crowds gather to visit it during its tour, which has already covered a number of cities… It has been venerated by some 2 million pilgrims in Russia, including President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Interfax reported on Friday.

So popular is the relic that queues have been stretching for kilometers and believers’ wait has been dragging to many hours. There have been rumors of such unseemly behavior as queue-jumping by VIP corteges, but this was denied by Russian Railways head Vladimir Yakunin, who helped organize the tour.

“No VIP passes and entries throughout the entire tour were organized,” Interfax quotedYakunin as saying. “In several places, people tried it with fake passes, but they were instantly stopped.”

I blogged on plans for the belt’s visit to Russia a few weeks ago – Yakunin believes that the belt will promote “family values”, and his wife Natalya (President of the Sanctity of Motherhood Program) recently took part in a World Congress of Families conference in Moscow with US Christian Right activists and others.

According to some background here, the belt was supposedly made by the Virgin Mary from camel hair and given by her to the Apostle Thomas during her ascension to heaven. A pious but scholarly nineteenth-century work by Romualdo Gentilucci (Life of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, 1860, p. 470) has further details:

We shall mention, first, the band or girdle, which the Greeks have since the fourth century claimed to possess, and which the Empress Saint Pulcheria transferred from Jerusalem.

The author adds a footnote with some background from the Greek menology of the Emperor Basil (via Latin):

In the Urbino edition of 1727, under Aug. 31, we read:… “Arcadius, son of Theodosius the Great, brought to Constantinople the girdle of the most Blessed Virgin Mother of God, from Jerusalem, where it had till then been preserved by a certain virgin, and deposited it for public veneration in an elegant shrine which was called the Holy Urn.” He then relates how it was found four hundred years after, under the Emperor Leo, and how by the touch of the girdle the patriarch delivered the Empress Zoe, who was tormented by an impure spirit.

Shaun Tougher’s The Reign of Leo VI (886-912) (1997, p. 144) suggests that this “ceremonial miracle” had a political purpose, as Zoe had a bad reputation. The belt eventually found a home at the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, and the current tour is the first time it has traveled to Russia. And as with Leo and Zoe in the ninth century, spiritual activities around the belt are again intertwined with political theatre:  as I’ve quoted more than once previously, Time magazine  in 2007 described the Russian Orthodox Church as Russia’s “main ideological arm and a vital foreign policy instrument”, and bringing the Mother of God’s belt to Russia can be seen in that context.

Yakunin is a seasoned impresario when it comes to transporting religious items; in 2009 the Economist reported from Jerusalem that

…a light kindled from the “holy fire”—the flame that emerges from the Tomb of Christ in an ancient Easter rite—is now flown to Moscow in a chartered plane. This is done with efficiency, fanfare and much coverage from the media. In charge of it is one of Russia’s inner circle: Vladimir Yakunin, head of Russia’s railways and pal of Mr Putin, whose security-police background he shares.

This is one result of the expansion of the Russian church in Jerusalem (background here), and Yakunin has also organised the return from Jerualem to Moscow of relics of Elizabeth Feodorovna, the pious Grand Duchess of Russia who was murdered in 1918:

No less important, for the guardians of Russia’s heritage, is the fact that holy objects can be brought from places like Gethsemane to Russia. Part of the saintly patron’s remains have been “repatriated” to Moscow to stay at the charitable foundation she created: the Martha and Mary community, which occupies a courtyard, garden and finely frescoed church near the city centre.

The restoration of that premises (now a monument to Romanov piety, with an impressive set of letters, photographs and mementoes), the partial return of Elizabeth’s relics and the broader process of fusing Russia’s “white” and “red” traditions have been overseen by some powerful, interlocking bodies. At their apex is the railway boss, Mr Yakunin. The office of two organisations that he heads—the Apostle Andrew Foundation and the Centre for National Glory—is just opposite the Martha and Mary community.

…Visitors to that office are greeted by Mr Yakunin’s deputy, Mikhail Yakushev, an Arabist and history buff.

Some of Yakunin’s other ventures more obviously link religion and politics: earlier this year, Baltic Business News reported that

Tuuli Koch, a reporter for Postimees daily, received the 2010 Bonnier Award, Estonia’s biggest annual prize for investigative journalism, writes Äripäev.

Koch won the prize for her story, published at the end of 2010, in which she revealed that Mayor of Tallinn Edgar Savisaar had secretly attempted to fund his political party and the building of a church in Savisaar’s electoral district in Lasnamäe through the deep pockets of Vladimir Yakunin, president of the Russian state-owned railway company.

Another initiative of the Apostle Andrew Foundation is the World Public Forum, which holds high-level international conferences in Rhodes on the “Dialogue of Civilizations”. In his opening speech at the most recent WFP conference, he noted “incompatibility between the neo-liberal interpretation of the system of human rights and the system of human values”, and that “the universal urge to have the ‘freedom’ to say ‘anything and in any form’ has a temporary character and is beginning to fade away”. In March, Yakunin presented an award on behalf of the forum to Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan, a few days before an election in the country.

Yakunin co-founded the WFP with two other men: one of these is a man named Nicholas Papanicolaou, who has close links with US neo-Pentecostal Christian Right activists such as Gen. W. “Jerry” Boykin and Rick Joyner. Papanicolaou, Boykin, and Joyner also all belong to a chivalric order which claims to have had Russian protection in the nineteenth century; however, while it may be tempting to develop this into a conspiracy theory, the historic link between the order and Russia is a matter of some debate.

UPDATE: Reuters has a nice quote:

The [St. Andrew the First-Called] Foundation, chaired by the head of Russia’s state railways and long-time Putin associate Vladimir Yakunin, said the relic’s arrival shortly before the parliamentary election was coincidental.

“It is absolutely not related. We wanted it to come in the summer, but the entire process, the discussions, took a long time,” spokesman Alexander Gatilin said. 

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Here’s one I overlooked from last month – from the Herald Citizen (Tennessee):

Sam Solomon may be an expert on Sharia law — but he doesn’t practice it.

Not anymore.

And tomorrow, the former Muslim and Islamic jurist from England will be at Tennessee Tech — one of several stops he’s making in Middle Tennessee in the coming days — to share his story of conversion and discuss different aspects of Sharia law, which is the legal system of the Islamic religion.

…Also speaking will be English social activist Andrea Williams, who, along with Solomon, works with England’s Christian Concern, an organization that seeks to introduce a Christian voice into law, the media and government…

…Solomon, in addition to his work with Christian Concern, serves as an advisor to British and European Parliamentarians. He lectures around the world on religious issues and is an expert witness on Islamic and religious matters.

…The Christian Concern Sharia law conference is being presented in association with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, a nonprofit organization designed to educate Tennesseans on policy matters relating to a variety of political, economic, and religious issues, including Islamic radicalization.

…In organizing the Sharia Law Conference, Zelenik had some local assistance from Kerry Duke, dean at Tennessee Bible College in Cookeville.

A photo of Williams and Solomon with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition’s Andy Miller and Duke can be seen on the TFC’s Facebook page; according to the caption:

Andy Miller and Tennessee Freedom Coalition is proud to stand with UK’s Christian Concern, Sam Solomon and Andrea Williams, and Kerry Duke !! Great Event at TN Tech today!

This event seems to have been a prelude to the “Preserving Freedom” conference which took place in Nashville last weekend: Solomon spoke at that event, as did Christian Concern’s Paul Diamond. According to WorldNetDaily, Diamond told the crowd at “Preserving Freedom” that

he and his British colleagues are going to begin coordinating their legal efforts with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition.

I thought that WND (or Diamond) had perhaps here meant William Murray’s “Religious Freedom Coalition”, but even if that is the case, the Tennessee Tech event shows that Christian Concern is indeed allied with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition – an organisation which offers enthusiastic support for the English Defence League and for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (a “brave man” who is bringing “truth to light regarding the spread of radical Islam both in the United Kingdom and around the world”).

Solomon and Williams have featured on this blog previously: Williams has made links with the Christian Right in Europe, while Solomon is the author of The Mosque Exposed, which claims that Muslim immigration to the west is a religious “obligation” undertaken as a form of jihad, and that moderate Muslims are engaging in a ruse as part of a conspiracy.

One “European Parliamentarian” with whom Solomon is particularly close is the UKIP MEP Gerard Batten; in 2007 it was announced that

Gerard Batten MEP held a press conference in the House of Lords on 29th April to launch in the UK the Proposed Charter of Muslim Undertanding, commissioned by him from Islamic scholar and author Sam Solomon.

The purpose of the Proposed Charter is to help identify those Islamic teachings that can be used by extremists to justify or condone intolerance and violence, and to offer moderate and peaceful Muslims a means of disaccociating themselves from those teachings. 

The document itself can be seen here; Solomon thanks Batten for “his kindness, leadership, sincerity and all his help”, and Diamond for his “legal expertise”. Batten – who spends his time worrying about Bilderberg conspiracies as well as Muslims – has made use of Diamond’s “legal expertise” himself, as explained here:

In a sensational ruling, an East London judge has declared that wives share full criminal liability for the actions of their husbands when it comes to TV licensing. Stratford Magistrate Court’s District Judge Celia Dawson has convicted Mrs. Batten under Section 363 of the Communications Act because of her husband’s refusal to pay the TV license fee.

…Mrs. Batten did not appear at the trial, but was represented pro bono by a leading human rights barrister Paul Diamond.

A March 2011 report in Searchlight claimed that Alan Lake, who was at that time involved with the EDL (he’s since fallen out with the group) “boasts of his links with Batten”, although details are scarce and so far as I can see unproven. Searchlight also speculates that Lake may have come across Solomon previously – Lake formerly attended Kensington Temple, a large neo-Pentecostal church in London where Solomon has given at least one sermon.

Returning to the Tennessee Tech event organisers, Kerry Duke and the Tennessee Bible College are also of interest; when not attacking Islam, Duke warns us that

The Catholic church does its best to denigrate the role of the Bible. Their ploy is to destroy faith in the Bible as the final authority so that men will be driven to Rome for direction.

Duke has also arranged adverts on billboards to promote “Biblical marriage”.

UPDATE: It appears that at least one leader of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition has personal links with the EDL: according to a 25 November Facebook posting in the name of the group:

Both Tommy [Robinson] and Paul [Weston] are Friends of Mine and will BOTH DO THEIR BEST FOR THE FOLKS OF BRITAIN!

Paul Weston heads the British Freedom Party, which recently entered into an alliance with the EDL.

UPDATE 2: The TFC’s Andy Miller apparently met “Tommy Robinson” earlier this year. The EDL website stated in July that

Leadership have met with TFC and are in talks with them to form a working relationship and TFC are intending to come back to the UK to have further meetings with Leadership.

In September, the EDL Support Group posted to Facebook an “Email received from Andy Miller Tennessee Freedom Coalition“:

Within the first 10 minutes of meeting Tommy (very privately in another dear new friend’s home in N. London for dinner) I knew I was sitting and talking with my younger brother.  He is currently jailed in London for breaking his bail for going to the EDL’s demonstration in Tower Hamlet.  He started a Hunger Strike the minute he was taken in.

What I can tell you about Tommy is that He Alone charged the Muslim protesters who pulled out a 4 foot paper Poppy and set it on fire during the Country’s moment of silence for it’s War Dead.  He grabbed the Black Flag of Jihad.  He has the Heart of a Lion.

He is 28 years old.  He recently got married.  He Loves his Country and will NOT sit idly by and watch what is happening to his Home.  He is a Christian that Loves God.  There is not a Single Racist or Bigoted Bone in his Body.  He GETS this subject right.  He is not Over Educated but IS EXTREMELY SMART.  when I think of one of my other famous English Hero’s, Churchill, I as well think of Tommy.  He is a Natural Leader and because of that his Government is Very Afraid of Him.

When I left that evening I told him that he is my brother.  I have talked with him since returning several times.  I will always stand Proudly by Tommy.  He and the EDL, which in 18 months has grown well past 100,000 strong, is Britain’s Last Best Hope.  He deserves Our Total Support.  I will support him with All that I Have and Am and Will.

Please read his words from Prison.  Know that he is Fighting Our Fight.

Yours as Well-

Andy

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In October last year, Nadine Dorries MP told Anglia Tonight that she had reported “four stalkers” to the police. Recently, Tim Ireland made a subject access request under the Data Protection Act to Bedfordshire Police in relation to this, and he was given a letter which Dorries had sent to the Chief Constable on 10 July 2010. The letter complained about four persons: three of them are bloggers and Twitter-users who had criticised her performance as an MP; the fourth, it transpires in Tim’s latest blog post, was her Liberal Democrat rival in the 2010 General Election:

[REDACTED BY POLICE], Tim Ireland and [REDACTED] talk about me almost all day and are arranging to meet with with others, in [REDACTED] which is where  I [REDACTED]  on the 20th of this month.

My former Liberal Democrat opponent remains more circumspect; however [REDACTED – read “she”] is part of the group. [She] Tweets as [REDACTED]

Tim’s name was not redacted as it was he who made the subject access request request for the letter. However, we can be sure that the other two persons in the first paragraph are the bloggers/Twitter-users “Mrs Humphrey Cushion” and Chris Paul, while the “Liberal Democrat opponent” is an obvious reference to Linda Jack, who Tweets as @Lindylooz (scroll to end of post to see further evidence that this is the correct identification). As Tim observes:

I hear this Linda person did all sorts of stalkerish things like distributing pamphlets and knocking on doors and disagreeing with Nadine Dorries and stuff. Who knows, she may even have deluded herself into thinking that she could one day replace a woman chosen by God to be an MP. How DARE she etc. etc. etc.

These are the “four stalkers”, whom Dorries wanted the police to suppress and criminalise. The hubris is astonishing.

***

Tim’s previous posts have dealt with Dorries accusations against himself and against Mrs Cushion (which led to vexatious visit from the police while Mrs Cushion was bedridden and in pain, following an operation which Dorries claims Mrs Cushion was lying about needing). Today’s post also deals with Chris Paul – Dorries complained to police that he had “apparently hung around outside my house”, and that “some people suggest [his]  interest is sexual”. Dorries supposedly got this information from “a journalist”, but Paul denied the claim on Twitter at the time:

@ChrispLOL FFS @nadine4mp. Last time in Woburn (once in 5 years) blogged pic of fabled Black Horse pub. NOT hanging round outside your huge farm.

Tim adds:

To be clear, [going near someone’s home] is not something I approve of (or enjoy) when it is done to intimidate, and I do not intimate or suggest for a moment that Chris Paul has been anywhere near Dorries home(s), but there are many circumstances that would make the investigation of any property this MP was living in an entirely legitimate exercise both morally and legally; many people suspect Dorries had been (almost) caught pretending to live in one place while actually living in another and that the hysterical noises she made were not there to ensure privacy or security, but instead to hide a pattern of behaviour that might reveal expenses fraud (which is what she would be guilty of if she had been claiming ‘second home’ expenses on a home she lived in most of the time). The former Mayor of Bedford (the late Frank Branston) once showed a passing interest in where Dorries lived. She smeared him as a stalker. A newspaper journalist once photographed the tiny gatehouse she claimed was her main home. She smeared him as a stalker. Chris Paul got a photo of the local pub. She smeared him as a stalker.

…There’s been some long-overdue talk about misogyny in online bullying lately, but this is the ugly flipside of that same coin; women pretending to be the focus of unwanted sexual attention in order to discredit and intimidate a critic.

Tim notes that Paul’s blog received several anonymous comments on 10 July 2010, which is the same date as Dorries’ letter. The first comment claims that “Mr Dorries” (sic – Paul’s post discussed her estranged husband) is “with the Police lodging a formal complaint”, while the second stated that:

Your blog and bloggerheads are both guilty under section 5. Your Twitter account and that of others you talk to are also guilty. Humphreycushion and others. I have no idea why Dorries hasn’t been to the police about the lot of you.

One thing for sure though, you will never see Peter Hands name anywhere, even though he was with Jacko today in Bedford firing her up. He will make sure nothing leads back to him when you are all payng your thousand pound fines.

Tim explains that whoever wrote this must have been aware of the letter’s contents – the letter also references Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. “Jacko” is again Linda Jack, while Peter Hand was a former Dorries staff member who had reported a £10,000 expenses claim to police.

Correction: I originally wrote that Tim had received the letter following a Freedom of Information request, rather than following a subject access request under the Data Protection Act.

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(Updated)

Mrs Humphrey Cushion writes on Tim Ireland’s blog:

On the night I finally had my foot operation (and was in tremendous pain & bed ridden for 3 days), 2 policemen burst into my bedroom (having scared my children into letting them in) and proceeded to attempt to bully me into accompanying them to the police station for an interview regarding Dorries’ stalking allegations. I refused, had fantastic advice from my great friend @Gaijinsan21 & no further action was taken. It was immediately obvious to the police that it was Nadine who was the liar of the piece. 

Mrs Cushion’s account comes following Tim Ireland’s publication of a second chunk of a letter which Nadine Dorries sent to the the Chief Constable of Bedfordshire Police on 10 July 2010, in which she complained about several persons who were inconveniencing her by subjecting her performance as an MP to critical scrutiny.

Yesterday’s chunk of the letter dealt with her general complaints against Tim and his blog – today deals with his presence at a hustings event in the village of Flitwick (pronounced “Flit-ick”), and with her accusation against Mrs Cushion.

Tim provides some background:

…Dorries had been seeking to shape hustings events to her advantage well before the Flitwick hustings event in May 2010. It was reported to me that she had denounced supporters of her opponents and other critics as ‘plants’ and ‘spies’ and even had alleged/imagined enemies forcibly ejected from her own private meetings.

…Concerned constituents wanted this final hustings event on record and made available to a wider audience, which is why they invited me to record and broadcast it.

Now, I do not deny that Dorries was properly frightened when she found out I was recording the meeting, but it had nothing to do with concerns about personal safety; Dorries was watching her political career flash before her eyes and would not be a politician if she did not immediately recognise the potential cost of my recording her response to any question(s) about her expenses two days before an election at a time when many suspected – and she knew – that she was under investigation for expenses fraud.

Dorries’ complaint about Tim’s presence at Flitwick led to a voluntary police interview in which it was determined that he had done nothing wrong; however, because of Dorries’ reaction he was warned that any further appearances might lead to some difficulties under laws covering harassment. Dorries and her allies deliberately misrepresented this as Tim having been warned about criminal conduct (all is explained here).

Dorries’ letter to the police links the Flitwick incident to Mrs Cushion:

He was informed of the meeting taking place by a woman known as [REDACTED BY POLICE] from [REDACTED]. [REDACTED – read “She”] also has a Twitter account in the name of [REDACTED, read @humphreycushion].

[REDACTED – read “She] also comments constantly on this site in a manner I can only describe as aggressive and written harassment.

Dorries gives no example of the “aggressive and written harassment” because – once again – she’s lying.

At this time, Mrs Cushion was indeed posting a large number of Tweets critical of Dorries (she is a activist for Labour, I believe as a result of Dorries’ antics), and Dorries was desperate to silence her: three months after writing this letter, Dorries went on to make a thoroughly malicious accusation of benefit fraud against her.

Mrs Cushion is a care-worker, but at the time of Dorries’ attack she was effectively disabled due to arthritis and she was waiting for an operation. Dorries insisted that if Mrs Cushion was well enough to be using Twitter to criticise her she couldn’t really be ill – and that her claim to be needing an operation was a lie:

Really? An operation on both feet for arthritis? Let’s put aside that surgeons never operate on both feet at the same time. This is a medical breakthrough. Hips and knees, yes, now feet! Amazing.  Twitter followers conned again.

In fact, Mrs Cushion indeed endured two painful procedures to her feet in order to get back to work, as I blogged here.

Dorries attempted to create a bit of distance from her smear against Mrs Cushion by leaking details to the pseudo-libertarian blogger Paul Staines (probably via Harry Cole, who knows Dorries and writes for Staines): a post attacking Mrs Cushion appeared on Staines’ website, and Dorries pretended that her own post on the subject was merely following his. Dorries was not only seeking to deceive readers of her blog – she was also insulting their intelligence.

It should be emphasised that Dorries’ reference to Mrs Cushion in her letter to police is not just an incidental detail in her case against Tim – in a statement to a news programme in October 2010 she made it very clear that she had reported “four stalkers” to the police. This fits with four persons who are named in the letter: Tim will be discussing her other two targets tomorrow.

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Back in September, Nadine Dorries made an announcement on her blog:

Some time ago, Tim Ireland, who hosts a number of objectionable websites, was questioned for five hours by Bedfordshire Police. Under caution and on tape, he was given a warning as to how his actions could be construed in relation to Section 2 of the Harassment Act.

Before and after that interview I had a number of meetings with the Police at which notes were taken.

Weeks ago, Tim Ireland applied for and was sent the redacted notes using the FOI act [Freedom of Information Act]. I assume he will publish them…

I blogged on some of the content Tim received here. Tim has now indeed begun publishing the materials he has been given – which consist not of “notes”, but of the actual correspondence that Dorries sent to police.

Dorries’ complaint shows her to have a shocking sense of entitlement and to be worryingly detached from reality. Her tirades ought to be hugely embarrassing for those who have band-waggoned on her accusations for their own purposes: these include Conservative bloggers such as Iain Dale, lazy journalists who have used Dorries’ outbursts as a source of easy churnalism, and a gang of on-line thugs who subjected Tim to a campaign of abuse and threats of violence as some kind of vigilante vengeance.

This is of some direct interest to me: Dorries has close links with UK Christian Right lobby groups, but there’s also a personal aspect. The gang of thugs who targeted Tim have also attacked me for daring to object to their behaviour: I’ve had threatening and goading emails, abusive websites created about me, and even identity theft on Twitter. The man who organised these attacks, Charlie Flowers, is today associated with activism on behalf of the Quilliam Foundation and British Muslims for Secular Democracy, and he has referred them to Dorries’ public statements on Tim as evidence of why I deserve such treatment, since I am a friend of a “stalker”.

The first segment which Tim has published comes from  a letter dated 10 July 2010 – Dorries has claimed she reported Tim to police before this date, although she hasn’t gone into details. The letter is typed and on House of Commons notepaper, but it begins with a handwritten “Dear Gillian”; this is Gillian Parker, at that time Chief Constable for Bedfordshire Police:

Dear Gillian,

For a number of years I have been subjected to a huge volume of internet attack from three individuals.

It began when a blogger, Tim Ireland, took exception to my position on abortion and the Bill which I took through the House of Commons. His blog is called Bloggerheads and his Twitter account is of the same name.

I cannot have a Twitter account as he has taken every permutation of my name which would be possible for me to use.

His previous Vitim [sic] before me was the [REDACTED BY POLICE] however, he moved away from [REDACTED, ALTHOUGH FINAL LETTER “r” IS PARTIALLY VISIBLE – READ AS “her”] when I launched my Bill.

His web site is almost totally devoted to me and if you read back you can see it is obsessive and aggressive to say the least and contains almost 100% lies.

During the General Election he moved from being an internet stalker and travelled from Guildford in Surrey to gatecrash one of my hustings. He seems to be unable to accept the fact that as he is not my constituent, I am not answerable to him.

One notes that Dorries’ sweeping accusations manage to include irrelevant facts – such as the sinister detail that Tim travels by train – but fail to give any example of how Tim’s actions could be regarded as either threatening or personally intrusive.

This is because she is lying to the police in an attempt to use them to intimidate a member of the public from holding her to account as an MP.

Tim writes:

It is true that Dorries first earned my attention while expressing her opinion on abortion. I watched her make a false accusation against a critic right before she claimed a 21-week-old foetus had punched its way out of a womb and misled Parliament…

Of course, Dorries didn’t actually use the phrase “punched its way of a womb” – this a satirical gloss on her use of the famous pro-life “Hand of Hope” photo, which was taken during an instance of in-utero surgery in the USA. A fetal hand is shown sticking through a surgical incision and resting adjacent to the surgeon’s finger; an “urban legend” has developed that the fetus had grabbed the surgeon’s finger (Ben Goldacre has the full story here). However, Dorries – a former nurse – pushed the tale even further:

…My second point is look at the tear in the uterus. See how jiggered it is just above the hand; and yet the rest of the surgically incised openings are controlled and neat. This is, in all likelihood, because the hand unexpectedly thrust out.

Tim also deals with Dorries’ other accusations:

The accusation of lying is especially insulting from someone who admits to using “70% fiction”on her ‘blog’ before changing her story and claiming she meant 30% fiction, and then changing her story again to say that she really meant no fiction at all, if one didn’t count the special lies she says the police advised her to publish to avoid the imaginary stalkers.

In particular, Dorries’ claims about not being able to have a Twitter account are easily shown to be a lie:

I have ONE account in the name of ‘Nadine Dorries’ and Dorries knows this. She has also seen this confirmed by authors of the other accounts using her name for a range of satirical vehicles. She also knows my and their use of this account name (and her name) is entirely legitimate… She shuns scrutiny to such an extent that she’s left Twitter in a huff twice now…

Dorries last deleted her Twitter account shortly after boasting that she was due to have a private meeting with the Prime Minister – whether there was a connection between the two events is unknown.

Among other matters, Tim’s subsequent posts will deal (once again) with the stalker smear, and with the other “individuals” she has accused. He’ll also revisit her claim that she has reported not just three, but “four stalkers” to police:

The four stalkers are three bloggers… and one big surprise. It is not a journalist, as previously thought. Details in an upcoming post. You’re going to love it. The sense of entitlement is off the scale.

The above is just a short summary focusing on some of the main points – for a proper understanding, I’d urge everyone to read Tim’s post.

(I’ve had a sneak preview; naturally, I won’t be giving any spoilers, but I will clarify that Dorries has not anywhere referred to me.)

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Yesterday saw the anti-Islam “Preserving Freedom Conference” take place in Maury Davis’ Cornerstone Church in Nashville (see here and here for background). WorldNetDaily – which was one of the sponsors – has a long puff-piece on the event, which includes mention of the involvement of Paul Diamond:

Paul Diamond, a private lawyer in the United Kingdom and the director of international affairs for the legal action group Christian Concern, said he and his British colleagues are going to begin coordinating their legal efforts with the Tennessee Freedom Coalition.

He urged his American colleagues to engage in debate with “middle America,” referring to people such as lapsed Catholics and nonobservant Jews who are not informed “but are scared about where their country is going.”

Further details are available from the SPLC:

Paul Diamond, a British lawyer who advocates for Christian causes and describes himself as a “street fighter with a posh British accent,” spoke admiringly of “American exceptionalism” and his fears of a Muslim takeover of Europe. Diamond expressed hope that Christians in America and the U.K. would stand “shoulder to shoulder” to battle the dual enemies of Islam and anti-Christian sentiment, warning that “What’s happening in Europe could be coming to your state.”

Christian Concern already works closely with the Alliance Defense Fund, but a link to the TRC would more controversial: the TFC’s website urges us to “Join the Tennessee Freedom Coalition in supporting Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson)”, a “brave man” who is bringing “truth to light regarding the spread of radical Islam both in the United Kingdom and around the world”:

Click here to help relieve the cost of his legal services. We support him, and we support the EDL.

However, one alternative possibility is that WorldNetDaily‘s report has here confused the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, which took part in the “Preserving Freedom” event, with the Religious Freedom Coalition, which took charge of the conference after the original venue cancelled its booking (Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer claim that the relocated event is actually a new event altogether – a self-evident falsehood which they have spread for their own purposes). The RFC, which is run by William J. Murray (the evangelist son of Madalyn Murray O’Hair), would probably to be closer to Christian Concern’s particular interests than the unrelated TFC [UPDATE: In fact, it turns out the report was quite correct: Christian Concern is indeed making links with the TFC].

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It’s not often that I indulge in armchair punditry on a subject that is being widely discussed elsewhere, but I’d like to make a few of observations on this:

Wales footballers have been given clearance to wear poppies on their black arm bands during the international with Norway on Saturday.

Governing body Fifa had earlier blocked both Wales and England from wearing poppies over the Remembrance weekend.

But after intense pressure from the UK government, and the intervention of Prince William as FA president, Fifa has backed down and changed its rules.

The interesting aspect of this is that remembrance poppies and FIFA have both been around since the the early years of the last century, and yet only in 2011 has this become an issue; as others have noted, an England match against Argentina on 11 November 2005 went ahead poppy-less and without controversy. According to an unnamed FA spokesman:

“…a greater focus has been given to the level of support and respect shown by the national teams [over the past five years.]… Since 2005, our clubs have all begun to wear poppies on their match shirts in domestic games for the early part of November as a mark of respect for those who lost their lives serving their country.”

The most obvious reason for this trend is doubtless the continuing roll-call of British soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a few other factors ought to be considered:

(1) As I’ve written before, Britain is a society in the process of trying to adapt to an individualistic culture in which people increasingly feel that their their professional lives should not completely stifle their sense of identity. This isn’t a bad development: terrible things have happened because people gave up any sense of individual responsibility once they were given a uniform and a job to do. Britain is not France, and it has long been recognised that there should be some accommodation for personal conscience and cultural difference. It is therefore not surprising to see national organisations asking for the same sort of flexibility at the international level.

(2) The last few years have seen one economic crisis after another. There’s not much that we can do about the decline of Britain’s standing and power in the face of global forces, but we can adopt a more assertive attitude on matters of national pride. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that in itself – some might dismiss it as psychological compensation, but it might also be seen as a re-connection with other priorities. However, it can have an unattractive side, as Alex Massie notes in the Spectator:

…When contestants on the X-Factor use the poppy as some kind of fashion accessory you know something grim has happened to the annual acts of remembrance…

There is, alas, something vulgar about this craving to be seen to show how much you care. Never mind how much you really care, just be seen to be seen to be caring. “Poppy fascism” is a revolting term but there’s also something pretty ghastly about “Poppy Monitoring” and the subsequent excoriation of anyone deemed to have “disrespected” the poppy, the dead and by extension Britain itself.

Marina Hyde discusses one example in the Guardian:

With a tedious inevitability, the Daily Mail’s campaign to divide the whole of Britain into people who wear poppies and people who are subhuman scumbags has reached the Premier League… In case you are not familiar with what we would be encouraged to refer to as “the growing row”, the facts are these. At the time of writing 15 Premier League clubs have applied for special dispensation to embroider a poppy on their shirts for games between now and Remembrance Sunday, while – far more thrillingly for the Mail – five clubs have not. 

(3) The poppy symbol came under attack a year ago, when a large model of a poppy was publicly burnt in London by members Anjem Choudary’s Muslims Against Crusades (MAC). This provoked widespread revulsion and anger, which has in turn perhaps helped to further consolidate public attitudes that the poppy is something that should be actively stood up for.

MAC was banned as of midnight last night on the following grounds:

Theresa May said she was satisfied the group was “simply another name for an organisation already proscribed under a number of names” including Al Ghurabaa, The Saved Sect, Al Muhajiroun and Islam4UK.

“The organisation was proscribed in 2006 for glorifying terrorism and we are clear it should not be able to continue these activities by simply changing its name,” she said.

However, the timing of May’s “satisfaction” was obviously related to MAC’s plan to repeat the poppy stunt (in an event called “Hell for Heroes”); we’ve all known from the beginning what Choudary has been up to with his various re-branded groups.

As a poster on Harry’s Place notes:

Either it isn’t possible to escape a ban by changing a group’s name – in which case, a criminal case should be brought against Muslims Against Crusades as a reincarnation of other banned groups – or it is.

If the Government believes it is possible to circumvent a ban by changing a group’s name, then there’s no point in introducing a new banning order. Is there?

Clearly, the new banning order has been brought in as a quick fix to prevent public disorder today, and in response to the public mood. But why hasn’t a criminal case ever been brought?

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Back in June and July I wrote about “Rescue Christians”, an organisation created by Walid Shoebat and his handler Keith Davies with the aim of providing safe houses for persecuted Christians in Pakistan and elsewhere. Shoebat’s friend Joel Richardson reports that he has spoken with at least one unnamed man who has been working on the issue in Pakistan, but Shoebat’s publicity linked the organisation to specific high-profile cases:

Qamar David’s family are regularly been threatened by the Islamic extremists, therefore they are kept in hiding by RC. Same in the Case of Rashid Emmanuel and Sajid Emmanuel and Fanish Robert.

As I noted when I first read this, the Emmanuel brothers were gunned down in court premises in July 2010. Robert died in police custody in September 2009 in circumstances that the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan described as “judicial murder”, while David died in suspicious circumstances in prison in February 2010. These are cases which have received international media attention, yet for some reason the role of Rescue Christians, and the specific details reported above, have not been reported anywhere.

I raised concerns about accountability, and I asked a few questions: why would Christians in Pakistan not turn to an organisation such as Open Doors or Release International, which have a track-record in this area, rather than a man known only for anti-Muslim punditry? And why is there no apparent liaison with groups such as Christian Solidarity Worldwide or International Christian Concern, which have both worked on the specific cases mentioned by Rescue Christians?

Shoebat’s handler Keith Davies has now stopped by with an explanation:

Mission Statement of Open Doors and all the other so called “reputable” aid charities for Christians:

“Serving Persecuted Christians Worldwide; We are an organization aimed at strengthening persecuted believers worldwide through community development, Bible & literature distribution, leadership training & education and ministries of prayer and advocacy.”

Notice there is no mention of actual rescue work. How can distributing Bibles save peoples’ lives. That is like giving Jews a copy of the five books of Moses before being herded into the gas chamber. The only reason we took on this work Mr Bartholomew is we went to all these organizations that are “reputable” and asked them to save one family we were working with but every one refused. All Open Doors wish to do is collect money to pay their directors wonderful salaries in order to make people “aware” and pray. Not one organization we approached out of the 5 “reputable” ones had any interest in giving practical assistance to families needing help. So we decided to do something ourselves. We take zero as a salary and 100% of the money is used to help the Christians with the money going directly to each family wired by Western Union. Our registered NGO who replicates the work of Rauol Wallenberg sets up the safe houses and coordinates the distribution of money. He himself is under threat and was recently physically attacked sustaining a broken arm and severe bruising, his camera equipment and money stolen

We have on record for any major donor that wishes to support “Rescue Christians” as well as for the IRS if they feel it necessary to check every dollar we have spent and who it was sent to…

In fact, both the British and American websites for Open Doors make numerous references to “safe houses” operated by the organisation.

If organisations such as Open Doors have “refused” to help with Shoebat and Davies’ project, I suspect that this is because of the controversy around Shoebat: not just the questions about his past and activities, but his excessive utterances as an anti-Islam activist: after all, this is the man who claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist, and who wishes there were more violent extremists so that “nukes” could be deployed against “the Muslim world”.

The Rescue Christians website has now for some reason disappeared.

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