Bartholomew's Notes

An announcement from Walid Shoebat:

The Walid Shoebat Foundation and Forum For Middle East Understanding launch new web site www.rescuechristians.org please visit this web site.

The purpose of this web site is to make more people aware of the plight of persecuted Christians worldwide as well as raise money to effect real rescue operations for persecuted victims with a primary focus initially in the Pakistan region.

Our work will involve providing safe houses, food and medical care for persecuted Christian families with direct one and one support, with no administrative costs or waste. Our work will also involve the gaining of visas for these families to restart their lives in Western countries so they can rebuild their lives. Full details of the program detailed on www.rescuechristians.org. We are already helping two families with many more on a waiting list for assistance…

Yours

Keith Davies
Executive Director Walid Shoebat Fdn

Confusingly, the website calls the organisation both “Rescue Christians” and “the Raoul Wallenberg Project”, depending on which page is clicked on (there is of course no association with the famous Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, which I doubt has given permission for the use of Wallenberg’s name). The website explains:

The Raoul Wallenberg Project is working with people on the ground who are well connected in the Christian community. They have reached out to us for our support to help alleviate their suffering, and in certain situations, help with their escape. For their protection we cannot expose their names publicly. In the future, large donors who are concerned about the transparency of funding, we can provide the names and details privately.

…Our financial goal is to raise one million dollars a month – solely for the Raoul Wallenberg Project – which will allow us to make a significant impact to alleviate much of the suffering of persecuted Christians and remove them from their circumstances. We are working behind the scenes with members of Congress, in particular the staff of Congressman Allen West, who has kindly offered his help on Capital Hill. Other members of Congress will be recruited as public opinion puts pressure on them for their support of this real, and dangerous threat to Christians worldwide.

…What you should know is that all of the people who are working with this project are doing so with no compensation for their time… We have experienced PR and business people with 40 years of business experience, as well as 14 years between working experience between Walid and Keith Davies (Directorof the Walid Shoebat Foundation). We’ve assembled a group who have been involved in running a charity, and are aware of working with activists.

…The cost of helping one family is approximately $1000 per month. That coupled with the initial set-up expenses of a safe house means we will need $10,000 the first month. After that, supporting six families will cost around $6000 a month. Legal costs will run about $7000 per family over an eighteen month period, plus the cost for airfare for each family will be $4000 – $8000. This just a drop in the bucket when we consider all of the hundreds, even thousands of cases of persecution.

This doesn’t seem to me to have been thought through very well at all. The names of the Christians they are supposedly helping are either confidential or they are not – leaking them to “large donors” is an amateurish way to demonstrate “transparency” and would anyway show very little about how efficiently or competently the organisation is being run. Why is there no formal board structure, or any trustees? Why haven’t Shoebat and Davies established a 501(c)(3), with all the checks and balances which would come with that? Further, “40 years of business experience” is so vague as to be meaningless. Shoebat was a computer programmer before he joined the right-wing pundit circuit; Davies used to sell greetings cards. What’s needed is expertise in arranging safe houses and in dealing with the various obstacles that are likely to emerge. Who is going to look after these “safe houses”? How will their safety be assessed? What protocols are in place should emergencies occur?

There are already well-established Christian organisations working in this area, such as  Open Doors and Release International. I’m sure there’s room for some more – but any new group surely needs to demonstrate a thorough understanding of what work in this area entails. Instead, the “Rescue Christians” website puts most of its emphasis on advertising Shoebat’s various books and videos on the evils of Islam.

There’s also the danger that Shoebat’s inflammatory approach to Islam will actually make life more difficult for Christians seeking refuge. As I’ve blogged previously, Shoebat’s utterances are so extravagant as to be absurd: he claims that he knows that Obama is a Muslim (“Islam could not defeat us by destroying the twin towers. But they are able to defeat us by sneaking in their man”), and he wishes that “nukes” would “take care” of the Muslim world. He also teaches that the Bible predicts the coming of a Muslim Anti-Christ.

Last July, Pam Geller and SIOA announced that they could provide “safe houses” for ex-Muslims in the USA. The announcement seemed to me to be a stunt rather than a serious project, and I note that there are no reports that any “safe houses” have been requested or provided since then.

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Charles Johnson draws attention to a new post by Pamela Geller, in which she cites a website that claims that Osama bin Laden only met his end because the military overrode the wishes of the President: “it appears Obama had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the OBL operation”, she tells her readers. Johnson notes:

Her source for this ridiculous rant? A site called “NewsFlavor” (it has the flavor of news without all those fattening facts), featuring unprofessional “articles” written by anonymous Internet non-entities. This article is credited only to “Ulsterman.”

Stay tuned, because the killing of Osama bin Laden has motivated Geller to plumb new depths of bad craziness. I have a feeling she’s just getting warmed up.

“Ulsterman” has been posting online for several months; he purports to be receiving information from a “White House Insider” (or “Deep Thoat 2”), and his “scoops” have included “Obama Battling Severe Depression” and the like, written in breathlessly polemical style (he’s also a birther, naturally). However, “Ulsterman” has been debunked as a hoax for months; this blog documents fake sources and names that have appeared in “Ulsterman’s” articles on a range of other subjects.

In November, Sam Gefland of the Twin Cities Daily Planet published circumstantial evidence that “Ulsterman” is a certain Anthony G. Martin; Martin has a Twitter feed and Youtube channel under the name “Welshman”, and he writes regular pieces praising and echoing “Ulsterman” on Conservative Examiner:

It would appear that the explanation is simple: Anthony G. Martin is the blogger known as Ulsterman.  He writes unfounded articles and publishes them on Newsflavor, a website that will print anything without any sources.  Then, he references the Ulsterman articles to back up his opinions.  Because his opinions have no facts to back them up, he creates the facts.  And, at the end of the day, it may not just be a political argument that he’s trying to win.

Triond pays its writers for how many clicks their articles get.  The more people who read the Ulsterman articles, the more money he receives.  Even though this amounts to a few pennies or maybe dollars per month, it is still clearly a motivating factor for Triond writers, who often make up outrageous and false stories in hopes of earning easy cash. 

Martin denies being “Ulsterman”, but it’s a pattern I’ve seen before on the internet: sites of ambiguous or obscure authorship that appear to know each other intimately, and which use citations to compensate for and distract from the fact that purported information being peddled cannot be traced back to any authoritative source. The hope is that the false impression of independent endorsements and of a wider conversation taking place will eventually lead to the information trickling up into the wider blogosphere or media. For that to happen, you need someone higher up the food-chain you can hoodwink or who doesn’t care a damn about what’s true or what’s false, just so long as it serves their interests. Step forward Pamela Geller.

Martin also has a website called “Martin Christian Ministries” (again posting as “Welshman”), where he advertises himself as a “Pastor, chaplain, evangelist, revival preacher”, who is available for “concerts, preaching, Bible conferences, all on a free-will, love-offering basis”.

I wonder if John Bolton ever feels embarrassed that his endorsement continues to appear on Geller’s website, or for providing a foreword for her anti-Obama book?

UPDATE: Robert Spencer is flirting with the same material; Christian Right newssite OneNewsNow reports:

Many critics think Obama is trying to use bin Laden’s demise as a way to prop up his credibility in the foreign policy arena.

“He’s certainly going to try,” notes Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer.

“He’s already taken credit for it, even though a series of revelations [has] come out now that indicates that he was quite reluctant to do it and that it was other people on his team, notably Leon Panetta, who were ultimately responsible for it. Nonetheless, he’s been taking credit for it and [will] continue to do so.”

There’s also an absurd coda:

…he points out that though Obama may have Islamic leanings, that does not mean he favors terrorism, as he may oppose it as a matter of principle.

So, although Obama may be a secret Muslim, he might not be a member of Al Qaeda. Right…

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A few times in recent weeks I’ve blogged on the subject of Nicholas Papanicolaou, a Greek-born businessman with an impressive CV. According to a blurb:

HSH Prince Grand Master Nicholas F. S. Papanicolaou Baron of Finlaystone Maxwell was born in 1949 in Greece. He completed his studies in Greece and got his economics degree at Harvard University and the degree of master of business management at University of Columbia in America.

HSH Nicholas F.S. Papanicolaou is the President of Lion Finance S.A. and Titan Capital Corporation… Earlier he held the posts of Chairman and Holder of control packet of shares of Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd and president of the Athens Polo Club.

Papanicolaou is currently involved in three organisations of interest: the World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilizations; the Knights Hospitallers of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, the Ecumenical Order (OSJ), of which he is current Grand Master, and the Oak Initiative. The OSJ also uses the name “Knights of Malta”, despite potential confusion with the well-known Roman Catholic order of that name.

The first of these organisations arranges high-level international conferences on inter-religious dialogue and has links to a Russian Orthodox organisation, while the second, like most “Chivalric Orders”, does charity work. Somewhat incongruously, however, the third is a vehicle for Rick Joyner, an apocalpytically-minded neo-Pentecostal player on the US Christian Right.

Joyner is also a member of the OSJ, and he has explained his involvement on his website: according to the story, Joyner made friends with Eugene Bird, who was formerly Rudolf Hess’s prison commandant. One day, Joyner asked Bird about the OSJ:

To my surprise Col. Bird told me that he had recently been knighted by this Order, and that I too had been recommended for investiture by an Austrian baron. He also told me about a spiritual renewal that was taking place in the OSJ, and that some of this had come about because of my books which were being read by the knights.

…The Austrian baron was already a believer in the prophetic, but he said that he had not seen anything on quite this level. This began a series of events that made Kurt Waldheim a believer as well. This was important for a significant prophetic/diplomatic meeting with one of the most powerful Arab leaders in the Middle East which would take place at a later date. This was when I first realized how some of the knights of the OSJ were being used for amazing spiritual-diplomatic achievements that were in the interest of the kingdom of God. 

Kurt Waldheim’s supposed conversion to neo-Pentecosalism appears to have eluded historians, as has Joyner’s claim that Bird also converted Hess, Albert Speer, and Baldur von Schirach. Even more bizarrely, Joyner recently boasted that Bird had introduced him to a man who had shown him Hitler’s secret burial place.

Within the OSJ, Joyner is listed as a mere “Deputy Member of the Supreme Council”; however, the Grand Chancellor is none other than General William “Jerry” Boykin. Boykin, who just yesterday shared a stage with Sarah Palin at an event in Colorado, is also involved with Joyner’s Oak Initiative, and he, Joyner, and Papanicolaou appeared together at a recent Oak Initiative Summit (also present was Alan Keyes, who called for Obama to be impeached). Further, at least one OSJ event has been held at the Heritage Grand Hotel in Fort Mill, SC. This is owned by Heritage International Ministries, which is run by Joyner’s MorningStar church; the site previously formed part of Jim Bakker’s doomed Heritage USA project, and Bakker is a friend of Joyner. Joyner has also featured Papanicolaou on his religious TV programme.

In turn, Joyner and some associates attended the World Public Forum in 2009 to take part in a panel on “Tradition and Modernization”: according to the schedule, Joyner, “Bishop Gregory Holly”, Bob Weiner, and Louis Sheldon shared the programme with various mainline religious figures and academics. “Holly” is actually Archbishop Gregory Holley, who has a website here; he is ordained into a group called “Independent Christian Churches International”. Weiner was the man behind the authoritarian Maranatha Ministries of the 1980s; this group collapsed amid recriminations at the end of the decade, although some of the figures associated with it have since re-emerged as a group of churches called Every Nation (blogged by me here, here, and here) Louis P. Sheldon heads the Traditional Values Coalition, which is known for anti-gay activism.

Papanicolaou has recently created a YouTube channel and posted a couple of short videos explaining the work of the World Public Forum and of the OSJ. In these videos, he emphasises the WPF’s inter-religious work, and how the OSJ helps all people around the world without discrimination, including “Muslims in need”. He adds that the OSJ also speaks out on behalf of persecuted Christians in Muslim countries.

His videos, however, do not discuss either the Oak Initiative or his new book Islam vs the United States, which is published by the Oak Initiative’s Oak Leaves Press. According to the blurb:

This book examines the historical, koranic, cultural, political and all-conquering character of many of the followers of Islam. It also exposes the strategic plan of the Muslim Brotherhood for the USA and the as yet unfulfilled obligations of Islamic States under the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, even, the very charter of the Organization of Islamic Conference and its fifty six member states. It concludes with a direct analogy and historical precedent to controlling radical Islam today as an all-encompassing way-of-life, namely the elimination of state Shintoism in Japan under the Potsdam Declaration of the Allies in 1945. 

Boykin famously regards Islam at satanic, and while speaking at the Oak Initiative Summit he declared that Muslims “curse Jesus” when they pray. Joyner’s views are of the same kind. One would think that a serious interest in the objectives of World Public Forum would be incompatible with support for the Oak Initiative’s aggressive anti-Islam and anti-intellectual fundamentalism. That’s a video worth making to explain.

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Oh dear:

The Associated Press has retracted a photograph released late Sunday night purporting to show the dead body of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.

AP announced that it cannot independently verify that the person in the photo is Osama bin Laden nor can it confirm the source.

The photo was prominently displayed by the Daily Mail‘s front page until about half an hour ago (unfortunately I didn’t get a screenshot), although it has now been quietly removed.

However, it wasn’t “released late Sunday night” – running the bogus image through the TinEye image search engine shows that it has been kicking around on conspiracy websites since at least November 2010; the AP and the Daily Mail should have been able to perform such a basic fact-check.

I suppose we should be grateful they didn’t fall for the photo here.

UPDATE: Tabloid Watch has a more comprehensive post, documented with screenshots. The Daily Mail, the Sun, the Mirror, and the Telegraph have all carried the photo, which in fact can be dated to at least 2009.

Meanwhile, Jared Earle, who alerted journalists to the fakery on Twitter, notes that the elements showing Bin Laden’s face are from an old photo, while Nick Cantle points out that the injuries come from a picture of a dead insurgent.

(H/T to Gen JC Christian)

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As has been widely noted, next week will see Sarah Palin taking the stage with General William “Jerry Boykin” at Colorado Christian University:

Former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker for Tribute to the Troops, a military and veterans appreciation rally at Colorado Christian University on May 2, 2011.

The rally will be held at CCU’s Lakewood Event Center. Also featured is Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, as well as cameos with members of all branches of the US Armed Forces.

Boykin gets around – a couple of weeks he was sharing a stage with Alan Keyes and neo-Pentecostal revivalist Rick Joyner to explain how Muslims “curse Jesus” when they pray (I’ve noted Boykin’s links to Joyner several times on this blog; Boykin is “Grand Chancellor” of a strange “chivalric order” of which Joyner is a member).

The “Tribute to the Troops” event is being organised by the Centennial Institute, a think-tank established at the university in 2009. Its president is former Colorado Senate President John Andrews:

John Andrews is Director of the Centennial Institute and a CCU cabinet member, as well as a Denver Post columnist and a TV/radio commentator. He was previously president of the Colorado Senate, chairman of the State Policy Network, and director of TCI Cable News. He has also served on a foreign scholarships commission for President George W. Bush, was a speechwriter for President Nixon and an education appointee under President Reagan, and founded the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.

Andrews also runs the “Backbone America Citizens Alliance”.

Boykin has spoken at CCU previously; according to an article by Andrews in the Centennial Review newsletter:

The Sharia Awareness Project, a campus lecture series, began when Centennial Institute opened its doors in 2009. Speakers have included John Guandolo, Brigitte Gabriel, Tawfik Hamid, Kamal Saleem, and Imam Karim Abuzaid, along with three lectures by Gen. Boykin.

Boykin, it should be recalled, contributed to the report Shariah: The Threat to America, published by Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy.

Andrews’ article complements a piece from Boykin, and he also has a warning about Muslims in America:

…when the question is asked, “Can a good Muslim be a good American?” we are inclined to say, “Of course, why not? “But if a good American is defined as one who gives high-est earthly allegiance to the Constitution with all its rights, liberties, representative institutions, and limitations upon government – and if a good Muslim is defined as one who gives highest earthly allegiance to the Koran with its absolutist code of Sharia law proclaimed as supreme above any civil law – the answer is not so simple. When you reason from those definitions, a clash of loyalties, potentially irreconcilable, becomes evident.

Jason Salzman of the Huffington Post called up Andrews and asked him about his use of the question-mark:

…I asked Andrews about whether it was true, what Andrews himself wrote in his Institute’s publication, that “the answer is not so simple” to the question, “Can a good Muslim be a good American?”

I told him that maybe I was reading too much into his statement, and did he really mean it? His use of the word “can,” I thought, left open the possibility that no Muslim could be a good American. Does Andrews really believe this?

“I’m not going to expand on what I wrote or comment further on what the general wrote,” he told me. “Both articles speak for themselves. They attempt to challenge thinking. I believe that’s one of the functions of any university. Some universities are better at challenging thinking in one direction. Some are better at challenging thinking in another.”

…Andrews said he told Palin’s staff that CCU’s Centennial Institute has worked several times with a “distinguished retired general” and wanted him to be part of the “uniformed services element” of the program, and Palin’s staff accepted this. It was agreed that Boykin’s remarks, as well as Palin’s, would be nonpolitical, Andrews said, adding that Boykin’s theme will be the sacrifice required to serve in the armed forces.

Incidentally, Boykin and Palin share the same ghost-writer, Lynne Vincent. Vincent has come to wider notice recently due to the success of Heaven is for Real, a book I discussed here.

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At least, I sincerely hope so.

From the current Radio Times:

The undead are also apparently working as copy-editors for the BBC.

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The Guardian reports:

Tehmina Kazi wears modest western dress and believes in plurality and diversity within her faith, Islam. For her pains, she has been labelled a whore, admonished for not wearing the hijab and accused, inaccurately, of wearing short skirts by people she has never met, writing online.

When she defended Usama Hasan, the London imam who faced death threats and was suspended from Leyton mosque last month after he said evolution was compatible with Islam, she had to go to police after receiving threats of her own.

Despite this, Kazi, the director of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, remains defiant in her role as one of the small but growing number of British Muslim women challenging and combating Islamic extremism.

…Rabia Mirza, who is involved with Cheerleaders Against Everything speaks about how involvement in fighting extremism has strengthened her faith. A disparate group with an anarchic sense of humour, reflected in its title, it has managed to get under the skin of both Islamic extremists and leftwingers. As well as mounting counter-demonstrations against extremists groups, its members go on extremist forums to argue their case.

Cheerleaders has informal links with Kazia’s BMSD as well as, controversially, the English Defence League. Ex-EDL members, who remain committed to challenging extremism but quit the far-right group because of a belief it was indiscriminate in its attacks on Islam, have joined with the Cheerleaders to form an organisation called the Nice Ones. Mirza says the idea is to link with those – “very few” – within the EDL whose goal is to combat Islamic extremism, rather than just oppose Islam.

This tells part of the story. I’ve encountered Mirza myself on a Facebook discussion forum, and in my experience she’s intelligent, moderate, and working in good faith to oppose Islamic extremism. It’s also true that the ex-EDL members associated with the “Nices Ones” group (or “NicesOnesUK”) are opposed to the EDL’s anti-Muslim extremism; the EDL is regularly criticised on the “Nice Ones” Facebook page, and claims published elsewhere that it is an EDL “front group” are, based on what I’ve seen, inaccurate (and accusations of “racism” are certainly off-base).

However, the report fails to give the full flavour of all that goes on in the name of the “Cheerleaders”: its prime mover, a man named Charlie Flowers, uses it as a vehicle to harass people he dislikes. This does not just mean Islamic extremists: Flowers used to be involved with Dominic Wightman’s “VIGIL Network“, and he used the “Cheerleaders” to intimidate a university lecturer who had discovered that Wightman was dishonest. When the blogger Tim Ireland and I discovered the same thing about Wightman, the “Cheerleaders” released Tim’s home address in an attempt to intimidate, and sent a stream of crudely abusive and threatening messages. Away from politics, Flowers has also used the “Cheerleaders” to harass individuals who had been victimised by Farah Damji (although Flowers appears since to fallen out with both Wightman and Damji).

There are also irresponsible attempts to manipulate extremists, as I noted here and here.

Naturally, for daring to point this out I’ve also become a target: Flowers uses the “Nice Ones” Facebook page to denounce me as a “Communist” and as a “Nazi” in league with Islamic extremists (alongside childish jibes such as “fat cunt”). He also recently created 10 or so anonymous blogs attacking me along the same lines.

Efforts by the likes of Mirza and Kazi to oppose Islamic extremism deserve support. What they don’t need, though, is a thrill-seeking vigilante muddying the waters. The problem for Mirza in particular is that Flowers has one or more accomplices in the “Cheerleaders”, and that he and they sometimes use sockpuppet accounts. I don’t think that Mirza has anything to do with this, but the way Flowers behaves means she’s likely to be tarred by association.

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News from Sierra Leone; Cocorioko reports:

The President of the Republic of Sierra Leone Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma has been awarded the “PEACE MEDAL AWARD” by the Universal Peace Federation in the United States of America.

…Delivering, her special message from Rev. Moon to President Koroma, Katherine Rigney said God is working positively through him and that the Head of State is an important figure working for peace in Sierra Leone and Africa. Sierra Leone, she said is an example of peace for the world.

And Koroma, grateful for the plaudits, has responded generously:

President Koroma said… that land would be provided for the erection of a Peace Embassy in Sierra Leone.

Rev Moon’s “Peace Embassies” are part of a wider strategy for gaining influence in Africa; at the end of 2007, a “Peace Embassy” in Zambia provided the location for the launch of a new breakaway church led by Emmanuel Milingo, the former Roman Catholic cardinal who now regards Moon as the “Messiah”.

Moon’s Universal Peace Federation, and its associated  has been remarkably successful in collecting endorsements and support from powerful and prominent individuals. I even ran a “spin-off” blog on the subject for a while

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Last month, the Guardian noted the publication of a new report about counter-terrorism training in the USA:

Political Research Associates, a Massachusetts-based progressive thinktank, spent nine months investigating the burgeoning industry of counter-terrorism training. It concluded that in seminars and conferences across America, police, transit and other law-enforcement officers were being given an ideologically skewed impression of Islam that impugned the entire religion, presenting it as inherently violent and sympathetic to terrorism.

One training conference, which PRA investigators attended, was held last October by the International Counter-Terrorism Officers Association, a body formed by New York police officers in the wake of 9/11. The conference was addressed by Walid Shoebat, a speaker used by several of the private training outfits.

Shoebat is a convert to Christianity, having formerly been a Muslim with links to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In his presentation, called The Jihad Mindset and How to Defeat It: Why We Want to Kill You, he accused Muslim men of raping women, children and young boys. “They are paedophiles!” he shouted.

According to the report, Shoebat went on: “The Muslim beheads with a smile. You can see it on YouTube, on TV; the Afghan child trained to execute Christians. You say that Islam is a peaceful religion? Why? It hates the west.”

He also said: “Islam is a revolution and is intent to destroy all other systems. They want to expand, like Nazism.”

The PRA report cited one of my blog entries for some general background on Shoebat, and my writings on Shoebat’s links to the ICTOA (e.g here and here) have come to the attention of Mike Riker, the ICTOA’s president. I have since received comments both in Riker’s name and under the pseudonym “PG1463”; “PG1463” has an email address that resolves to a Facebook page called “Pres Ictoa”,  his IP address is the same as Riker’s, and both sources tend to post around the same times.

The comments adopt rhetorical strategies that are wearily familiar, although they give further insight into Riker and the organisation’s way of thinking. Readers can draw their own conclusions, but in my opinion they appear foolish and further undermine confidence in the ICTOA’s ability to provide competent and appropriate professional training.

First up: any criticism of Riker is support for Islamic extremists:

Just because Riker’s judgement isnt to your apporoval doesn’t mean hes wrong. Your judgement on attacking organizations who are out to protect you and the public is bad judgement in my opinion. So when your bowing the the east and helping stone women remember you were warned but chose the other path.

Next: criticising Riker over his use of Shoebat is an attack on the First Amendment:

Well its called the 1st amendment. Who he chooses to like is his business and not yours. Your like that little old lady next door who has there nose in everyone else business, get a life Rich

Also: raising substantive points on a blog doesn’t count:

So call in tomorrow and talk to Walid himself and air out your opinion. Im hoping that you will call and talk to him and not hide behind the cloak of the blog.

Followed by

…Sorry you didnt make it to the interview with Walid. Guess you were afraid to confront him one on one. You questions could have been answered from Walid himself instead of trying to put word into other peoples mouth…

The background here is that Riker wanted me to phone in to an internet radio show that he runs with an associate, and on which Shoebat spoke yesterday.

For some strange reason, Riker seems to think I need to prove something on a forum of his choosing, but I think that what I’ve written about Shoebat stands on its own merits. I’ve linked and referenced appropriate sources, and I hope (although I don’t expect) that decision-makers in law-enforcement training will eventually take notice through “trickle-up” processes such as the PRA report. If Riker thinks that everything I’ve put forward can be exploded by pointing out that I haven’t phoned his show then he’s free to find comfort in that opinion, although I can’t see anyone with any sense being impressed.

Riker has also posted a comment providing a link to one of Shoebat’s “Last Days” expositions; as well as expounding on Islam and terrorism, Shoebat also  teaches that Muslims will soon come under the direct control of the Anti-Christ as we approach the Second Coming of Jesus. This blog has details of a recent presentation by Shoebat at a church in California.

Incidentally, another reason that Riker wanted me on his show was to get some free publicity; his co-host is a strange attention-seeker who controls a web of interlinking “news” websites that promote another “private intelligence” organisation. These sites also include details – including photographs – of this co-host’s past unconventional private life, dwelling on sexual matters and presented as some sort of exposé. Presumably this is a bizarre strategy to drum up publicity through an appeal to prurience; I’m not inclined to play along.

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The accusation, from Tim Ireland (first paragraph quoting the The Times):

[Nadine] Dorries claimed £9,987.50 for Marketing Management in June 2007 for the design, layout and production of an annual report and for consultancy. She says she spent the money, and posted a copy of the report on her website. However, it does not appear to be professionally produced.

…There is no record of any payment made for distribution of this ‘annual report’, it does not appear to have been published on/through Dorries’ site at any stage (despite her claims to the contrary)

…I seriously doubt that any opening argument about the strained budget of a local hospital can justify spending close to £10,000 of taxpayer’s money on what appears to be two-page ‘report’ promoting Dorries’ campaign to reduce the availability of abortion.

The response, from Nadine Dorries:

For anyone who cares to know, blogger, Tim Ireland, who chooses to write blogs which are malicious, un-founded and for the most part totally untrue, has been warned by Police not to enter Bedfordshire. 

However, this doesn’t stop him from wasting tax payers money via freedom of information requests and then letters of complaint to the information commissioner when they don’t work. Stopping that comes next! My poor staff :(

It should be recalled that when Tim raised the issue of Marketing Management back in February, its director, a personal friend of Dorries named Lynne Elson, complained both (a) that Tim had failed to contact her for information and (b) that his perusal of publicly available documents about payments amounted to “intrusion”.

Tim’s new post also carries a statement from the police stating that the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that there is “insufficient evidence” over the matter to prosecute Dorries for claiming expenses dishonestly.

As I’ve observed before, Dorries’ sense of entitlement is legendary – for instance, her response to the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority guide to expenses was a mocking post on her blog with a photo showing how her copy of the document had supposedly been blown out of her office by a gust of wind onto a nearby roof. It is possible she sincerely believes that a persistent critic of her political activities ought to be restrained and suppressed by the police.

UPDATE: It should also be remembered that Dorries’ own blog is “malicious, un-founded and for the most part totally untrue”. She’s used it as a platform for a spiteful and intrusive personal attack on her lover’s estranged wife, as well as to smear as a benefits cheat someone who criticised her on Twitter.

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