Bartholomew's Notes

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Hollywood’s glow is helping turn the Rev. Sam Childers from a self-proclaimed Pennsylvania hillbilly into a global brand. It’s also shining the glare of international scrutiny on his once-obscure Somerset County charity.

The new movie “Machine Gun Preacher” portrays Childers, 49, of Central City as killing paramilitary terrorists with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades to rescue children in an African war zone.

His group, operating under several names, including Angels of East Africa, runs orphanages and schools. With help from Hollywood backers, it’s raising money and expanding programs like never before.

The film has garnered considerable media interest: Fox News describes Childers as a “Christian Rambo“, and lead star Gerard Butler was present at the UK premiere at the Mayfair Hotel at the end of September.

I blogged on Childers back in 2006; the Sudan Tribune described him as a “commander” with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, and I was particularly alarmed at his admission that he “stockpiles weapons” for the SPLA at his orphanage, as part of the war against the Lord’s Resistance Army.

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review raises the same concern:

Neighbors claim his flagship orphanage in South Sudan is neglecting children, leaving them hungry and crammed into small rooms. Portrayals of Childers’ violent tactics in the movie and his autobiography ignited uproar among advocates and aid workers over whether he might cause more harm than good.

…Some neighbors around Nimule want Childers removed and the orphanage turned over to local leaders. While Childers was on an American publicity tour, Nimule community leaders told a reporter for the magazine Christianity Today that he dishonored his agreement with them. The resulting story detailed a local government inspection that found the orphanage with no food, little medicine and shelters on the verge of collapse.

Those problems are real, said the Rev. Juma John, director of Cornerstone Children’s Home, another American-backed orphanage located less than 2 miles from Childers’ Children’s Village. Community leaders are upset by guns at the compound and that Childers does not stay long to lead it.

The Christianity Today report can be seen here – and it turns out that the SPLA aren’t too keen on being associated with him, either:

…an officer in the SPLA denies any association with Childers, and has asked Childers to stop “staining our names.” According to a letter obtained by CT dated April 8, 2011, Lieutenant General Obuto Mamur Mete told Childers that he had become “a problem,” and urged him to stop “using the names of our authorities, me in particular, to manipulate your wrongdoings.” Mete also told London’s Daily Mail that Childers’s “claims to have fought alongside us are a lie. He has never even seen the LRA.” Childers disputes Mete’s claims, saying that he has fought with the SPLA and against the LRA.

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In Norway, Dagbladet reports a strange story about Lena Andreassen, former head of the Norwegian Defence League. Andreassen has reappeared after being reported missing to the police while on a trip to the UK, and the paper has described and published what are alleged to be emails and texts from Alan Lake.

Andreassen came to wider press attention in July following the Utoya massacre: she stated that Anders Breivik had formerly been associated with the NDL (which probably means no more than that he was a forum member), but that she had expelled him on becoming leader because he was “too extreme”. It’s not clear when she herself stepped down from leading the NDL, although a rally she organised in April attracted only a handful of participants (including Darren Lee from the UK – as Darren Marsh, he has commented on my blog here).

Alan Lake, meanwhile, has been described as the English Defence League’s “financier”, although he has stated that his financial involvement has been exaggerated. For their part, the EDL officially repudiated Lake in August, after bad publicity arising from some of his statements.

Dagbladet further reports that Andreassen has been in contact with Paul Ray, another early organizer of the EDL who is now estranged from it. Ray’s interest in “Templar” matters and his “Lionheart” blog-identity prompted media speculation that he may have been the mysterious “mentor” mentioned in Breivik’s manifesto – I explained here why this can’t be the case. Alan Lake was among those pointing the finger, and Ray in turn has accused Lake of being the mentor. However, Lake has no interest in Crusader fetishism, and I’m inclined to the conclusion that Breivik’s “mentor” is a fantasy figure.

The two text messages allegedly from Lake and published in Dagbladet refer to Ray (second image partly obscured by photo flash, missing text taken from article):

[1] Paul Ray? How much must I pay to get rid of him for good?

[2] Try to meet him on a boat, it is better on a boat. But take along some rope and some heavy bricks or something :-) Just in case you need them. [It is always] handy stuff when you are [aboard a boat].

Doubtless Lake (assuming the texts are genuine) is here expressing his annoyance at Ray for accusing him, and for numerous abusive posts on Ray’s blog (some including images that superimpose swastikas onto pictures of Lake).

The texts were allegedly sent on 24 August, and photos of them were apparently forwarded to Ray after Andreassen and Lake themselves fell out (towards the end of September). Further Facebook posts and emails have been reproduced on another blog. Assuming the items are genuine, Lake has accused Andreassen of a breach of confidentially to a journalist which may have put his family at risk, and he has threatened to report her to social services in Norway over her care for her own child. Andreassen has responded by twisting this into the incorrect claim that Lake has threatened her child.

Ray, meanwhile, has cautioned Lake to back off with a typically-modest Biblical quotation:

Psalm 105:15 “Do not touch My anointed ones, And do My prophets no harm.”

UPDATE: An interview with Andreassen was published in Dagbladet on 24 October. While her account is vague, she claims that she had traveled to Newcastle to meet friends who were former EDL members, and and that she was held against her will in an apartment for two weeks after overhearing someone making threats on the phone. Further, she now claims that joining the NDL was the “stupidest thing” she had ever done, and that she is not against “ordinary” Muslim immigrants to Norway.

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Following on from yesterday’s post, I’ve found this press release from the US law firm Holland & Knight:

Holland & Knight successfully defended client The Florida Priory of Knights Hospitallers of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, the Ecumenical Order against charges of trademark infringement, false advertising and unfair competition issues.

On September 29, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled in favor of the firm’s client, bringing to close an unusual case that featured testimony on the activities of Napoleon, Tsar Paul I of Russia and other historical figures.

The charges were brought by the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta (SMOM), a Catholic non-profit international organization that shares a similar background and mission with The Florida Priory. Both organizations trace their histories to the eleventh century and provide charitable and humanitarian services, however, The Florida Priory is a chapter of an ecumenical Christian organization not affiliated with the Catholic Church. Its headquarters is in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The SMOM is a high-profile Roman Catholic organisation; as its website notes, it “maintains formal diplomatic relations with over 100 States and International Organisations. It is also recognised by the United Nations, and by the Holy See.”

That cuts no ice in Florida, though:

…In the end, the District Court dismissed all of the claims against The Florida Priory and instead, found that SMOM had obtained four of its trademarks by engaging in fraud during the application process. The court ordered those trademarks, which include the phrases, “Knights of Malta,” “Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, “Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem,” and “Order of Saint John of Jerusalem” cancelled.

The court found that SMOM ignored the rights of The Florida Priory and its parent international organization (which the court acknowledged had commenced operations in the U.S. 18 years before SMOM) in its PTO applications by stating that it knew of no other entity using the marks even though SMOM was aware of the parent organization and The Florida Priory. The court also found that since the two organizations share a common history prior to 1798, references to that history are appropriate and do not constitute false advertising under The Lanham Act.

The rival “Ecumenical Order” has a “Royal Protector” in Prince Enrique de Borbon y Garcia-Lobez, but the “Prince Grand Master”, as I noted yesterday, is a businessman named Nicholas Papanicolaou, author of Islam vs the United States. The “Grand Chancellor”, meanwhile, is Lt. Gen William G. “Jerry” Boykin, a well-known Christian Right activist and a contributor to the report Shariah: The Threat to America, published by Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. A “Deputy Member of the Supreme Council” is the neo-Pentecostal evangelist Rick Joyner, and Joyner claims that his books are in part responsible for a “spiritual renewal” in the Order. Boykin and Papanicolaou are in turn board members of Joyner’s neo-Pentecostal Christian Right outfit, the Oak Initiative.

Last year, Boykin and Papanicolaou published an aggressively anti-Muslim (and anti-Obama) fundraising letter for the Order:

The Obama Administration’s Department of Homeland Security recently swore in two devout Muslims in senior posts…. Was it not “Devout Muslim men” that flew planes into U.S. buildings 9 years ago? Was it not a Devout Muslim who killed 14 at Fort Hood?

……Our Order and its predecessor going back to the 11th century AD, always made protection of Christians and our Judeo-Christian culture its main purpose. Will you help us with your contribution, so that we can help those in the United States who can raise awareness of the danger confronting us and our Constitution?

Obviously, it will not be helpful if SMOM is mistakenly associated with this kind of rhetoric.

The “Ecumenical Order” has posted a statement explaining its “history and rights”:

…As the heir and continuator of the original Order of the Knights of St John which made Russia its base after 1798, OSJ regrets the apparent confusion in SMOM’s announcement regarding OSJ’s history and rights.

OSJ notes that, unlike SMOM, it receives no government support and yet over the last three years alone has donated more than $60 million in medicines and medical supplies around the world…

This record is made possible through our very low overhead costs and the absence of official diplomatic relations with other nations, which would necessitate the maintenance of expensive embassies whose benefit to the local needy and poor is highly questionable. Like SMOM, which has been granted observer status at the United Nations as an NGO, OSJ hopes to also be recognised by the UN.

OSJ vigorously defends and supports Christians in nations where Christianity is under attack at present, such as Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria and others. Such support is carried out with medical supplies and through appearances in international media such as Fox and CNN, where OSJ Knights speak out frequently in defence of Christians and of our Judeo-Christian laws and values. In doing so publicly, OSJ is probably unique among the many Orders of St John…

The issue of dispute is what happened after 1798, when Napoleon invaded Malta and the Order of Saint John was forced to leave the island. The SMOM website lists the line of succession during this period as follows:

71 Fra’ Ferdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim 1797 – 1802
72 Emperor Paul I of Russia (de facto) 1799 – 1801
73 Fra’ Giovanni Battista Tommasi 1803 – 1805

After this there was no Grand Master until 1879, although Tommasi nominated Innico Maria Guevara-Suardo as “lieutenant general” to follow him, and this was confirmed by Pope Pius VII. A permanent base was established in France from 1834.

The Ecumenical Order, by contrast, lists Tsar Paul as becoming Grand Master in 1798, but after 1801 there is a break until 1913, at which point Grand Duke Alexander of Russia is listed. After him comes a second break, from 1933 to 1960, when an American named Crolian Edelen de Burgh appears.

An essay by the historian Jonathan Riley-Smith has some further background (1):

The Hospital of St John has to endure the illegitimate and eccentric grand mastership of Tsar Paul I, who was not Roman Catholic, celibate, professed or recognized by the Holy See…

As for the Russian branch:

This had been abolished by Paul’s successor, but in nineteenth-century Russia there was considerable interest in its traditions among the descendants of its original commanders…. Romantic interest manifested itself in foundations outside Russia after the Revolution, which through fission have multiplied into no less than 27 separate bodies…

A Russian group did continue to exist, though, and a Russian Grand Priory was established in Paris after 1917, with exiled Russian hereditary knights.

The claims of what is now known as the “Ecumenical Order” are disputed by Guy Stair Sainty, author of The Orders of Saint John (“published by the Most Venerable Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of which HM Queen Elizabeth II is Sovereign Head”). Sainty wrote a critical letter to Rick Joyner 2000, after Joyner published a booklet on the Order called Courage that Changed the World (1997).

The story is somewhat obscure, but the St John of Jerusalem Research Web Site (run by Rev Michael Foster, representing the British Priory of the Paris-based Russian Grand Priory) describes Joyner’s group as “essentially an offshoot of an ‘Order’ which began in 1953 founded by a Charles Pichel but claiming its origin in 1908 in the USA”:

Earlier in the 20th Century semi-masonic organisations of “Knights” emerging out of the Orange Lodges (The Black Association) had set up in North America. Arthur T. Lamson led such a group called “The Knights of Malta”, which allegedly had registered itself as a Corporation in the State of Jersey in 1911. However by 1912 the group had become defunct, with the members reconciling with another group which they had left previously.

The incorporation of 1911, which had been gained by the “Knights of Malta” as led by Arthur T. Lamson had lain dormant, even though the group had ceased to exist. The archivist of the “Knights of Malta” Order, had been a Dr. Bullock who was consulted by Pichel. Dr. Bullock died, with the records held by Pichel. Armed with these records, Pichel developed a whole prehistory for a new group he founded or with which he was connected. Adding to the claim to have been founded in America in 1908, he improved on the Orange Order background by mimicking the foundation of the Paris group, complete with its Russian Hereditary Commanders. 

Crolian Edelen de Burgh was a close associate of Pichel (a far-right activist [2]), but eventually fell out with him and denounced his claims. Further:

In the 1970s “Prince” Roberto Paterno Castello who had been the Grand Master of the Pichel Order (1979 – 1992) left to become Grand Master of his own Order. The Canadian Grand Priory of the Paterno Order had for its Grand Prior, Frendo Cumbo, who in the mid-late 1990s formed his own Order of St John, of which he occupies the elevated position as Grand Master.

Paterno is listed on the Ecumenical Order website as following de Burgh from 1974-1993; he was followed by Prince George Korey-Krzeczowski from 1993-1997, at which point Cumbo is listed. The St John Research Web Site author (presumably Foster) complains about Joyner’s “apologetics… on behalf of the Cumbo ‘Order'”, and he accuses Cumbo of falsely claiming to be a hereditary knight. Cumbo died in 2006; he was succeeded for a few months “pro tem” by a certain Adrian Busietta, after which Papanicolaou took charge.

**

(1) Jonathan Riley-Smith (2007), “Towards a History of Military-Religious Orders”, in Karl Borchardt, Nikolas Jaspert, Helen J. Nicholson (eds), The Hospitallers, the Mediterranean and Europe: Festschrift for Anthony Luttrell (Ashgate: Aldershot), pp. 269-284.

(2) See Russ Bellant (1991), Old Nazis, The New Right, and the Republican Party (Political Research Associates: Cambridge MA), p. 45: “Pichel [was] an adviser (via correspondence from the US) to Hitler aide Ernst Hanfstaengl. Pichel’s Order is a secret society led by anti-Semites who have worked with the quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby and with neofascist Lyndon LaRouche groups”. Further, a Winter 1986 report from Covert Action Information Bulletin (reposted on some dubious websites) explains that:

The Shickshinny Order, officially called “The Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem,” has been headed by Col. Thourot Pichel in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, although a few years ago the Order was torn by serious internal rifts between Pichel and the late Frank Capell, Contributing Editor of the John Birch Society’sReview of the News. (See, Rev. Anthony Cekada, Light on the OSJ, from the Oyster Bay, New York The Roman Catholic, December 1981, for an article critical of the Order and discussing some of its recent history.) It traces its legitimacy from a dispute during the time the Order spent in Russia under Czar Paul after it fled Malta. This Order achieved some notoriety a few years ago when it officially recognized the claims of controversial defector Michael Goleniewski to be Aleksei Romanoff, heir to the Russian Imperial House of Romanoff.

The case would be less interesting if James Angleton were not one of the principal supporters of Goleneiwski and some extremely rightwing members of the military intelligence community were not listed as members in a document issued by the Order in 1970. The Order listed as members of its Military Affairs Committee, under the Chairmanship of Gen. Lemuel C. Shepherd, Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, and Gen. Pedro A. del Valle…

Of course, there is no suggestion that just because two past Grand Masters of what is now the Ecumenical Order (Crolian Edelen de Burgh and Roberto Paterno) had links to the Pichel Order that the current Ecumenical Order therefore shares any of Pichel’s political views.

UPDATE: Rebecca Tushnet’s 43(B)log has more, relating what appears to be a court document. It has further details of the Ecumenical Order’s version of its past:

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At Gates of Vienna, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff recounts a recent visit to Rhodes, where she was invested as a “Dame of Grace of the Knights Hospitallers of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta — The Ecumenical Order”:

In March of this year, during the launch of “The United West”, I had the great pleasure of sitting next to the Grand Master of the Order of St. John, Nicholas Papanicolaou. After my speech, Mr. Papanicolaou invited me to join the Order in recognition of my efforts to inform the public about the Islamization of the West, in particular that of Europe. It was an invitation I immediately accepted.

Sabaditsch-Wolff spoke at an English Defence League rally in February, and in June she signed a letter rebuking Pamela Geller for (temporarily) repudiating the organisation; the EDL website is publicising the event under the headline “Friend of the EDL, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Honoured by Knights Hospitallers in Rhodes”. Also in February, Sabaditsch-Wolff was found guilty by an Austrian court of  “denigrating the teachings of a legally recognised religion” for denouncing Muhammad as a paedophile.

Papanicolaou and his “Order” have featured on this blog previously: while he is the “Grand Master”, the “Grand Chancellor” is none other than General William “Jerry” Boykin, who back in August was boasting about how Rick Perry had “very humbly stood before” a group of evangelical leaders, which included himself, to explain that his high-profile “Response” prayer event was “not a political ploy” (Perry announced his Presidential bid a few days after the event). Boykin can be seen in a picture posted as part of the Gates of Vienna report, and his “Grand Chancellor” title appears in the order of service.

Another member of the Order, listed as “Deputy Member of the Supreme Council”, is the neo-Pentecostal evangelist Rick Joyner, and Joyner claims that his books are in part responsible for a “spiritual renewal” in the Order. Boykin and Papanicolaou are in turn both members of Joyner’s “Oak Initiative” Christian Right organisation, and Papanicolaou recently wrote a book for the Oak Initiative’s publishing house, called Islam vs the United States. Joyner is a neo-Pentecostal, and back in March,  following the Fukushima earthquake, he prophesied economic meltdown in the USA and an earthquake in California.

The “Ecumenical Order” has no connection with the better-known Roman Catholic Knights of Malta, properly known as the “Sovereign Military Order of Malta”. Sabaditsch-Wolff reports that

SMOM very recently lost a lawsuit in a United States court against the Order of St. John. Not only was the Order of St. John vindicated, but SMOM also lost all of its copyrights in the United States. 

The “International Headquarters of the Order, and Seat of the Supreme Council” is given as “Castello Dei Baroni Wardija SPB 07, Malta GC”, although the contact address is the less imposing “Grand Magisterial Chancery, 700 South Dixie Hwy, Suite 107, West Palm Beach, Fl. 33401”. The organisation has an Italian-language website here, and two English-language websites here and here.

I previously blogged on the world of “chivalric orders” here.

Footnote: A further odd connection is that Papanicolaou is also a co-founder of an organisation called the “World Public Forum”, which held a “Dialogue of Civilizations” conference on Rhodes just a few days after the investiture. Curiously, however, Papanicolaou was not listed as being involved in this event, despite being on the island at around the same time [UPDATE: A photo on the WPF shows that he was present].

The World Public Forum exists in a rather different milieu from the US Christian Right and “counter-jihad” polemics: it attracts international mainstream academic, religious, and political figures, and Papanicolaou’s fellow co-founder is Vladimir Yakunin, who runs Russia’s railways and is a confidante of Vladimir Putin. Yakunin made a speech at the conference, noting “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”.

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From Sean Rayment at the Telegraph:

At least 200 potential terrorists are actively planning suicide attacks while living freely in Britain, intelligence chiefs have warned ministers.

A senior intelligence source has revealed that the figure is a “conservative” estimate of the threat facing the country from UK-based Islamist suicide bombers.

The would-be killers are among 2,000 extremists who the security services have said are based in Britain and actively planning terrorist activity of some kind.

The figures are contained within a secret government report on the “enduring terrorist threat” facing the UK from al-Qaeda and affiliated organisations, The Sunday Telegraph has been told.

…The 200 British residents thought to be planning suicide attacks, either within the UK or overseas, represent one in 10 of the wider group of 2,000 terrorist plotters.

These figures have been widely repeated in other newspapers.

Unfortunately, the Telegraph tells us nothing about the “secret government” report’s methodology. Where has the figure of “2,000 terrorist plotters” come from? Is that another “estimate”, or are 2,000 persons currently under surveillance? If the latter, why haven’t there been more arrests? If the former, on what is the estimate based? And what’s the basis for extrapolating from this figure to “one in 10” extremists supposedly “planning suicide attacks”?

Of course, it would be foolish to dismiss the report out of hand. We’ve had one terrorist outrage in the UK already, and other plots have been disrupted: the “hook” for the above is six arrests in Birmingham. It’s also obvious that a journalist handling classified information has to take some care not to compromise security operations. But what we’ve been given is so vague as to be near useless: just enough information has been leaked to make us all feel alarmed, while denying us any context which would allow any kind of independent assessment (much less think sensibly about counter-measures).

One also wonders how much of Rayment’s report has come from the horse’s mouth and how much has perhaps come second-hand via a minister. Coming in the wake of so many duff media reports about terrorism (for example, “breast implant bombs“, “HIV bombs“, and “Terror Target Sugar“), this simply will not do.

UPDATE: Yorkshire Ranter points out that the “2,000” figure has in fact been in the public domain for at least four years. From the BBC on 5 November 2007:

There are at least 2,000 people in the UK who pose a threat to national security because of their support for terrorism, the head of MI5 has said.

Jonathan Evans said there had been a rise of 400 since November 2006.

So, either there’s the same number of terror-supporters now as there was then, which ought to be of interest in itself, or the Telegraph‘s figure is based on data that’s four years old and derives from a public speech rather than a secret report.

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That was spotted by Angry Mob, who observes:

Initially they updated it to BC, rather than AD…

Brilliant.

Although credited to “Daily Mail Reporter”, the article is actually a pared-down cut-and-pasted press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

As readers may recall, the Mail on Sunday was just last week at the forefront of a campaign to denounce the willingness of BBC to allow the use of “BCE” and “CE” as being part of an atheist-Muslim plot against Christianity in Britain.

Warming to his earlier success on this topic, Mail hack Chris Hastings is now the paper’s BCE/CE-Finder General, and in a follow-up article he reveals the grim discovery that:

The Mail on Sunday has established that dozens of universities, museums, leading historians and even the retailer W H Smith have either dropped BC and AD entirely or they are using it alongside the alternative BCE and CE system.

Hastings quotes a “spokesman for the Department for Education” who prefers BC/AD, which apparently means “embarrassment” for the BBC and warrants the ludicrous headline “Government to save Year of our Lord from BBC’s ‘Common Era'”.

However, while the use of BCE/CE is to be generally deplored, the Mail‘s Melanie Phillips has decreed an exemption for Jews:

along with many other Jewish people I sometimes use CE and BCE since the terms BC and AD are not appropriate to me.

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A website called European Son has an interview with James Cohen, the new head of the English Defence League’s Jewish Division (Roberta Moore stepped down in June, complaining of anti-Semitism, and links with the main EDL have been strained). Cohen expounds on how the British government has been plotting to destroy “British values”, and on the EDL’s support for Israel. As for the far-right element:

ES: Well, but, as I’m sure you know, there have been many, many photographs of EDL members giving Nazi salutes. Combat 18 [a violent neo-Nazi group] has turned up to some of their demonstrations. So, what do you say to that? That doesn’t seem to be a great environment for Jews.

JC: Some of that I’ve already covered. Certainly since the EDL is the only game there is, you’re going to get all kinds of Nazis that join it. I’m sure there are all kinds of communists in Labour. But, a lot of those pictures are just guys hailing taxis, and waving at friends.

ES: But some of them were certainly not that. Some of them were certainly people giving Nazi salutes.

JC: Yes, there certainly were.

ES: So, you don’t think that represents the EDL?

JC: I know it doesn’t. As I say, the EDL is a very loose group; it’s not like a country club. You look at certain neighborhoods in certain cities that are being rapidly transformed. They’re being utterly obliterated… there are two sets of laws in place [one being sharia, the other British law]…

In fairness, I’ve had doubts of my own about some of the photos which supposedly show EDL Nazi salutes, but, as Cohen concedes, there are also unambiguous examples of the gesture. The notion of the EDL as “neo-Nazi” is something of a red herring, but given the reality of at least some infiltration at EDL events a dismissive “hailing taxis and waving to friends” explanation is not going to inspire confidence.

European Son appears to be broadly supportive of the EDL while maintaining some distance – in the wake of the Norway massacre, it posted an article called “the EDL needs to come clean”, although this has since been deleted. The site is run by the Hudson Institute’s A. Millar, although he downplays references to himself. In one article for the Hudson Institute, Millar calls on the EDL “to express support for reformist Muslims”, which is a rather overoptimistic hope. Like Cohen, Millar has also written for the International Free Press Society.

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I was recently asked, and agreed, to add my name to the following letter, in response to an article by Jim Wallis published here. My name’s position at the top of the list of signees is purely an accident of alphabetization.

I previously blogged on Mark Pinsky, who is discussed in the letter, here. 

Dear Jim Wallis,

We are writing in response to your e-mail to the Sojourners list on September 29th, and your similar piece on The Huffington Post, in which you claim that “some liberal writers” — whom you do not name — are broad brushing evangelical Christians as “intellectually-flawed right-wing crazies with dangerous plans for the country.” You characterize unnamed writers — writers like us — as people who are “all too eager to discredit religion as part of their perennial habit and practice.” This charge is as unfair as it is unsubstantiated.

You may recognize some of us as people who have written in recent years about such tendencies in modern Christian evangelicalism as dominionism, apocalyptic demonization, Christian Reconstructionism, and the New Apostolic Reformation. We see these forces as playing a significant role in our religious and political lives.

We are concerned about your recent attacks for three main reasons.

Our first concern is your claim that writers who are critical of these tendencies are making broad, unfair claims about “most or all evangelicals.” This is just not so. We understand and try to reflect in our work the idea that some, but certainly far from all, evangelical Christians embrace or are influenced by these important movements.

We agree with you that evangelicals are highly varied; are not all politically conservative; and that certainly not all are Republicans. None of us has ever thought or written that they are. Indeed, some of us are evangelicals ourselves. We know that former Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are evangelical Christians. And some of us have written about how elements of the above-mentioned movements and tendencies are also involved in the Democratic Party.

We understand that there are complexities in life, religion, and politics. We take seriously the need for and the extraordinary privilege of constantly learning. As writers, we are quite varied among ourselves. We are religious and non-religious; Christian and non-Christian. We have different histories and emphases in writing about religion, theology, and politics. We do not always agree with one another. But we all do agree on this much: These exclusionary Christian movements and tendencies are real, overlapping, and significant in evangelicalism specifically and in our political and electoral culture at large. We invite our readers to consider that there are aspects to these movements and tendencies that are profoundly problematic, and we invite you to consider that as well.

Second, we are concerned that you have endorsed the essay by Mark I. Pinsky that appeared recently in USA Today. That piece attacked some of us by name and all of us by implication. Pinsky’s is but the latest in a series of prominently published smears against those of us who write about these subjects and their ties to powerful political interests. We are disturbed that you would cheer on these ad hominem attacks.

Finally, Pinsky tries to blame much of the published criticism of these elements of evangelicalism on left-wing Jews. We, including the majority of us who are not Jews, view this as a transparent effort to intimidate Jewish writers. We are shocked that you are endorsing and promoting Pinsky’s attack on these writers, whose work is well-sourced and painstakingly researched.

We are also shocked that you equate these Jewish writers with “secular fundamentalists” whom you say “want to prove that evangelicals are stupid and dangerous extremists.” You do this by immediately following this claim by stating that Pinsky’s essay is one of “the best responses to the recent articles about evangelicals.”

We want to remind you that in his essay Pinsky goes so far as to compare the work of those four Jewish writers to some of the worst anti-Semitic smears in history, including false claims that Jews had “horns and tails, ate the blood of Christian children and poisoned the wells of Europe with plague.. [and] conspired to rule the world through our Protocols.”

Whatever one may think of any of our published work, the fact is that none of it is remotely analogous to the false claims in the various notorious anti-Semitic forgeries known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Pinsky ‘s equation of the work of the writers he names with the Protocols is despicable.

We would like to believe that despite our differences with you, you share with us a common desire for a just and peaceful world. We value honest disagreement and debate, and hope that you value these as well. Indeed, as writers we know how essential they are to clarifying and even resolving differences, correcting errors of fact — and dare we say, perspective. These are necessary ingredients for democracy itself. We invite you take issue with any specific facts or characterizations in our work. Then we will have something to talk about. But we will not be silent in the face of smears and intimidation tactics — which are so very far from the values of the faith traditions from which many of us hail, and the civic values of free speech and respect for religious pluralism that we all share.

We call on you to stop making false characterizations of our work and stop promoting the false characterizations of others. We also specifically ask that you rethink your support for Pinsky’s smear and withdraw it.

Richard Bartholomew
Blogger, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion

Russ Bellant
Journalist and author of The Religious Right in Michigan Politics

Chip Berlet
Journalist, blogger, co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort

Bill Berkowitz
Independent journalist. Contributor to BuzzFlash, AlterNet, and Z Magazine

Rob Boston
Assistant Editor, Church & State Magazine
Columnist, The Humanist Magazine

Frederick Clarkson
Journalist, blogger, author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy; editor of Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America

Joe Conn
Editor, Church & State Magazine

Barry W. Lynn
Publisher and Columnist, Church & State Magazine
Host, CultureShocks Radio Show

Greg Metzger
Independent journalist. Contributor to Christian Century, Commonweal, Books & Culture and Touchstone

Rev. Dr. Bruce Prescott
Blogger at Mainstream Baptist
Host of Religious Talk radio show

Sara Robinson
Journalist, blogger, Senior Fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future

Adele M. Stan
Washington Bureau Chief, AlterNet

Rachel Tabachnick
Researcher and featured writer, Talk to Action

Bruce Wilson
Co-founder and featured writer, Talk to Action

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A double-whammy of stupidity from Rabbi Daniel Lapin, in conversation with Pat Robertson:

The Torah, in ancient Jewish wisdom the Bible, actually explains something which we have lived through which is one of the great mysteries: the plot of 9/11… Not only do we find references in Zachariah to four mysterious crafts that come through between two mountains made of metal, in biblical terminology mountains can be natural mountains or also anything tall that grows up like two buildings, also the idea that the plot was hatched not in Mecca or Medina or Riyadh or anywhere else in Saudi Arabia, that plot was hatched in Hamburg, Germany…

Lapin is making a garbled and absurd reference to Zechariah 6: 1-8:

I looked up again, and there before me were four chariots coming out from between two mountains—mountains of bronze. The first chariot had red horses, the second black,  the third white, and the fourth dappled—all of them powerful. I asked the angel who was speaking to me, “What are these, my lord?” The angel answered me, “These are the four spirits of heaven, going out from standing in the presence of the Lord of the whole world. The one with the black horses is going toward the north country, the one with the white horses toward the west, and the one with the dappled horses toward the south.” When the powerful horses went out, they were straining to go throughout the earth. And he said, “Go throughout the earth!” So they went throughout the earth. Then he called to me, “Look, those going toward the north country have given my Spirit rest in the land of the north.”

There are no “mysterious crafts”: instead, the author is obviously describing symbolic chariots for the four “spirits of heaven”. The “mountains of bronze” are not buildings: the image has been taken from Babylonian mythology to represent the gateway into heaven. It should be further noted that the chariots are “coming out from between” the two mountains, rather than crashing into them, and that their drivers are spirits sent to do God’s work around the world, rather than terrorists sent to the USA to massacre people. Lapin is either a fool or a fraud: but either way, it’s clear from this that he doesn’t give a damn about interpreting the Bible with any kind of integrity. And the same goes for Robertson, for endorsing such a farrago of nonsense.

But while we’re still trying to swallow that, Lapin serves up a dessert. 9/11, he explains,

… was based on a dream that Adolf Hitler had in 1943 which was to fly suicide Luftwaffe German air force bombers into the towers of Manhattan… That was a Hitler dream described in a book called ‘Spandau Diary’ written by one of the Nazis who was captured after the war and who witnessed, and actually I’ve seen drawings, and I don’t doubt for a moment that the Muslim plotters, in the mosque in Hamburg who laid out the plans for 9/11, I don’t doubt for a moment that they encountered those same plans. I don’t think they thought of this themselves. This was the fulfillment of a dream that was really put in place early on in World War II.

Lapin is referring to Spandau: The Secret Diaries, by Albert Speer. In his entry for 18 November 1947, Speer recalls that

I never saw [Hitler] so worked up as toward the end of the war, when in a kind of delirium he pictured for himself and for us the destruction of New York in a hurricane of fire. He described the skyscrapers being turned into gigantic burning torches, collapsing upon one another, the glow of the exploding city illuminating the dark sky. Then, as if finding his way back to reality from a frenzy, he declared that Saur must immediately carry our Messerschmitt’s scheme for a four-engine long-range jet bomber. With such range we could repay America a thousand-fold for the destruction of our cities.

The plan for a “jet bomber” is mentioned again in passing in the entry for 2 November 1953. There is no mention of Manhattan, and no concept of a suicide mission: the “jet bomber” was obviously envisioned as dropping bombs on New York, rather than as being a bomb itself.

Last year, Lapin took part in Glenn Beck’s “Divine Destiny”, as one of Beck’s “Black Robe Regiment” of conservative pastors. A subsequent Media Matters post, drawing on earlier Washington Post reports, notes Lapin’s links to Jack Abramoff, whom I previously discussed here.

(H/T Right Wing Watch)

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John Joseph Jay has become God’s lonely man:

…i am despised by the left.  toxic to my friends, those who remain.  and, seemingly either ridiculous or not of interest to all others, just not relevant in any particular, it would seem.

[….] i have no editorial, nor intellectual, nor administrative connection with either “f.d.i.” or “s.i.o.a.” nor have i ever. […] i support what they do, … , but, i apparently add nothing to it, & detract from it.

Jay is referring to the controversy which has followed a recent post on his blog in which he called for the killing of “talking head media”, of “every self avowed socialist and communist in congress”, and of “the faculty senates at harvard, yale, columbia, nyu and university of california at santa barbara”. This was of wider interest due his formal association with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer: he was a co-founder of their American Freedom Defense Initiative, and according to Spencer (in a statement he has since retracted) he was also a board member of Stop Islamization of America.

Geller and Spencer have known about Jay’s sanguinary views for some time: in 2008, Jay left a comment on Geller’s blog on the need for “old fashion war with wholesale slaughter including indiscriminate death of innocents and babes. down to the last muslim, if necessary.” In 2010, a statement about the need to kill liberals and Muslims came to general attention thanks to the Daily Kos – Spencer’s response was to claim that Jay had been misrepresented in some unspecified way by “Hamas-linked CAIR and dhimmi Leftist jihad-enablers”.

That, though, was before the Anders Brevik massacre; Geller and Spencer are today rather more circumspect about being linked to someone who fantasises publicly about mass killings. Think Progress has a new quote from Geller:

Jay helped me out so I could get the incorporation papers filed, but was never a Board member or a part of the organizational structure in any way. He was gone almost as soon as he was there, and is not a member of AFDI.

This contrasts with a 2010 reference made by Geller to “my associate, the attorney John Jay”.

Spencer, meanwhile, has backtracked from the claim that Jay was ever a SIOA board member:

“He was never a board member. I don’t recall saying he was, but if I did, it was in error.” That was “was a mistake on my part,” Spencer wrote in another email after ThinkProgress provided a link to his post.

This belated cutting of ties following bad publicity fits a pattern – Spencer and Geller formerly worked with the Christian Action Network, and broke with the group only when its anti-gay rhetoric caused political embarrassment to Gert Wilders.

(Hat tip: Little Green Footballs)

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