Bartholomew's Notes

More strife in Luton; the Times reports:

Nine people were arrested yesterday after trouble flared during a protest march against supposed Muslim extremists.

…Yesterday there were about 500 protesters, some carrying banners with slogans such as “No Sharia Law in the UK” and “Respect our Troops”. Several cars were damaged after a small group split off from the march. An Asian-owned business had its windows smashed.

The Sun adds:

Banner-waving drunks, some disguised under balaclavas, trapped terrified Asian staff inside a restaurant.

While the Daily Mail tells us that:

There were reports of violence, with onlookers claiming that an Asian man was hit across the face with a banner and left with a bloody nose.

Apparently the trouble flaired up when the protestors left the march route. The reports also tell us that March for England (a group which I blogged  on here and here) had pulled out from the event, and that  United People of Luton was the organiser.

This will of course  serve the purposes of hate-mongers on both sides in Luton: namely, the handful of Islamist extremists who protested a military parade in March, and Paul Ray, the local anti-Muslim blogger known as “Lionheart”. Ray, who rants on American Christian radio about “Paki Muslims” and who opines that “you should not judge [the BNP,] who God is doing a work with and through”, makes no distinction between ordinary Muslims and extremists, and he has been quick to capitalise on the Islamist provocation. In a video advertising the 24 May event, Ray warned that (see here, at 3.00):

The rumour is that coach loads of Moslems are travelling down from Bradford to counter this peaceful legal demonstration

We all know what happened in Bradford in 2001

The video was made in the name of “United People of Luton”, but it is unclear what role he plays in the group, if any [UPDATE: His blog now carries details of a speech “that was to be presented by UPL’s guest speaker at the end of yesterdays planned protest before it turned into the debacle which it did”. This is not published elsewhere, so it must mean that Ray is close to the group’s organisers, and is perhaps one of them himself].

There is no evidence that any Muslims came into the area from outside, although one Muslim website tells us that

a few hundred brothers gathered to defend their families,homes and community against these racists and marched together only to be stopped by riot police when they prepared to confront the racist thugs.

The majority of Muslims  in Luton have repudiated the extremists who protested the soldiers, and according to one tabloid story the extremists’ ringleader, Sayful Islam, was recently assaulted by Muslims upset over the trouble he’s caused.

A local mosque was firebombed earlier this month; although the police don’t appear to have made much headway, they have said they don’t think far-right extremists were the culprits. Local Christian and Muslim groups have been working together to try to defuse the situation.

Yesterday’s disorder  in Luton follows a protest held in April, which enjoyed sympathetic coverage from some “anti-jihadists” in the USA, particularly Pamela Geller. I blogged on this here.

Ray has now posted a blog entry on the subject, including links to a series of videos (these can be seen here). He tells us that:

I was there yesterday and March for England did not participate in the days event because “this is not what they are about”.

They offered to assit and support, aslong as it was an orderly protest, but as soon as it turned into chaos they walked away.

A report in Luton Today from a couple of days ago added:

And Luton Borough Council, which had initially given permission for the event to go ahead, yesterday said the event did not have an official go-ahead because the original organisers, March for England, had pulled out.

…Mikey Birch, 22, now in charge of the event, said: “We want to warn any right-wing organisations they won’t be welcome at the march. They won’t be allowed to come in with us.

“Anyone wearing bomber jackets or skinheads will be turned away. They’re not part of Luton and we don’t want them to turn up thinking they can take part. If you’re a racist, don’t turn up.

Judging from the footage posted on-line, it seems that, as before, the protestors were mainly drawn from football supporters’ clubs. The videos include scenes of the police being goaded in the most vulgar way;  in video 2 at 00.47 one person waves a plank of wood around [UPDATE: Actually, on closer inspection I think it’s just the base of a placard]  from a safe distance while calling out to the police his opinion that they are “fucking left-wing fucking cunts”.

UPDATE: Paul Ray tells a commentator:

No one thinks that removing the militant wing of Islam from our land is going to be easy, and if the government will not do it then the people will, and they will quite obviously be wearing balaclavas to do that, because the government will come down on them for defending their community.

The people of the British isles cannot win!!!

So decide where you stand and who you stand with.

Bring out the gimps!

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Tory MP Nadine Dorries is currently in the news due to comments on her blog complaining that MPs were the victims of a “McCarthyite witchhunt” over their expenses: an opinion which has embarrassed David Cameron. She has also attacked the motives of the Telegraph‘s owners, David and Frederick and Barclay, despite the fact that the Barclays (invariably described by Private Eye as the “weirdo Barclay twins”) are notoriously aggressive in using libel law to protect their reputations, and true to form, Dorries’ blog has now been removed. The Guardian reports:

Nadine Dorries, the Conservative frontbencher who claimed the Daily Telegraph’s revelations on expenses could drive MPs to suicide, has had her blog shut down by lawyers acting for the newspaper…The newspaper is understood to have acted after she made further allegations concerning the motivation of the newspaper’s proprietors, Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay. Withers, the lawyers acting for the Barclay brothers, are understood to have instructed the takedown, invoking the acceptable user policy used by internet service providers to protect themselves against libel action provoked by comments on websites they host.

Tory blogger Iain Dale is on the case:

Can it really now be illegal or libellous to question a newspaper’s agenda and motives, or those of its owners? Is it really illegal to accuse someone of a witchhunt? I don’t happen to think that the Telegraph is undertaking a witchhunt, but I can quite see why some MPs do. Those who believe Nadine’s main accusation, which is that the Telegraph has an agenda to boost UKIP and the BNP, may, at first sight, have their views reinforced by this morning’s edition which has a lengthy profile of UKIP leader Nigel Farage. Reading it, however, it’s not quite the paen of praise it might first appear.

Internet Service Providers needs to develop some cojones in the face of legal threats from big companies. If this had been an American ISP they would have probably laughed at the letter sent by the Telegraph.

Alas, this is an obtuse reaction: an accusation that the Telegraph‘s owners want to boost UKIP merely imputes political bias, but to suggest support for the rascist BNP is in a different order. And if American ISPs are more robust, it’s because American libel law allows them to be so, not because they have more “cojones”.

Despite this, though, I do agree that the forced removal of Dorries blog is unacceptable, and Telegraph-hosted bloggers ought to feel embarrassed at having the paper’s masthead on their sites. If someone has just cause to complain they have been libelled, they should see the author in court, not threaten the ISP to have critical material removed.

Further, it seems to me that we need a “public figure” provision in British libel law, along American lines. If someone thrusts themselves into a public controversy, it should be allowable to discuss their backgrounds and to speculate on their possible motives freely, short of “actual malice”. Dorries did not suggest she has any real evidence of a BNP link, which could be disputed in a court – she was simply sounding off about the facts in the public domain about a matter of public interest, and any reasonable reader can judge for themselves whether her analysis deserves to be taken seriously. It’s annoying when reprehensible motives are unfairly imputed to a person’s writings or actions (in particular, the charge of “racism” is bandied about on-line immoderately), but the bar for a libel action should be considerably higher than this.

Incidentally, if Dale really wants to protect free speech, he could have a word with some of his Tory libertarian friends – often they are most enthusiastic users of libel law to suppress public discussion.

(Hat tip: Harry’s Place)

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Here’s one I missed from a couple of weeks ago – a report for WorldNetDaily by Aaron Klein (who currently glowers strangely at readers from a advert for his new book) attacking Jacqui Smith tags a paragraph on the end about Mike Guzofsky, the far-right Israeli activist ncluded on Smith’s exclusion list:

Making the list was well is Mike Guzofsky, a leader of the ultra-nationalist Kahane movement, which seeks to ensure that Israel retains biblically-rich territories, such as the West Bank and Jerusalem. A BBC profile falsely claims Guzofsky is “actively involved with military training camps.” The only camps Guzofsky currently runs are to train dogs to protect Jewish communities in the West Bank. Dogs trained at Guzofky’s northern West Bank kennels recently prevented several terrorist attacks. Guzofsky previously was involved in leading workshops to teach self-defense to Jews. He has also pushed for Jews in the West Bank to cede from Israel and create their own state in the event the Israeli government seeks to evacuate that territory in a deal with the Palestinians.

As Terry Krepel noticed recently, a WND story by another author which referred in passing to Guzofsky as an “extremist” (a description lifted from other reports) was quickly amended to “nationalist”. I’ve chronicled Klein’s support for Guzofsky since 2006; usually Klein refers to him by his Israeli name of Yekutel Ben Yaacov, which obscures his Kahanist background. Klein doesn’t tell his readers that Kahanists want to see Palestinians expelled, and that Guzofsky has some sanguinary views which have been documented by the ADL. Early in in 1994 Guzofsky suggested that  Yitzhak Rabin was a traitor and suggested that violence might be needed to get rid of him; he has also opined that the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein had acted out of “love”, and he gave implicit support for bombs targeting progressive Jewish groups in the USA. If a Palestinian radical had made similar comments there would be an outcry against such barbarism; yet WND is more than happy for the Israeli far-right to declare war on civil society in the USA and in Israel.

WND‘s target audience, of course, consists of right-wing Christian Zionists; many adherents of this doctrine love to wrap themselves in the Israeli flag and to identify vicariously with God’s Chosen People at war against the Muslims, but there is less willingness to engage with the socio-political complexities of life in Israel. Instead, they end up giving support to extremist fringe groups who hate Israeli modernity but who promise to create the revived Biblical Israel of Christian Zionist fantasy. Klein’s whitewash is not the only example of this; Hal Lindsey, for instance, has used WND to promote the far-right and theocratic self-styled “Sanhedrin”.

Meanwhile, Max Blumenthal has just posted two parts of a video he made while in the West Bank; they include details of settler violence.

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Ssempa on Kayanja: “I have no problem with Kayanja. He has never sodomised me.”

The current anti-gay obsession in Uganda appears to be taking on the characteristics of  a seventeenth-century witch hysteria; Box Turtle Bulletin has a useful round-up:

This latest campaign began nearly two and a half months ago when three American anti-gay activists spoke at a conference in Kampala organized by Pastor Stephen Langa’s Family Life Network. That conference featured Exodus board president Don Schmierer, Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, and purported raiser-of-the-dead and Richard Cohen protegé Caleb Lee Brundidge.

The March 3-5 conference called for Uganda’s laws against homosexuality — which currently call for a life sentence — to be “strengthened” with an option to force those convicted into ex-gay therapy. Exodus International “applauded” Schmierer’s role at the conference, but Exodus President Alan Chambers later tried to wash his hands of responsibility for it as the repercussions of the conference unfolded.

These repurcussions have included a campaign of “outings” by a local newspaper, and there are claims that now even non-gay men are being imprisoned on suspicion. Lively is described as a “Holocaust revisionist” due to his book The Pink Swastika, which claims that homosexuals were perpretators of the Holocaust, not its victims.

Futher, a number of high-profile pastors are now accusing each other.  Recently, a “saved ex-gay” named George Oundo appeared at a press conference organised by Langa:

Oundo named a popular Catholic priest, Fr. Anthony Musaala, as a homosexual. Musaala, whose Charismatic Renewal Movement has a huge youth following, just happens to be a longtime rival of Ssempa.

Other pastors are jumping onto the “outing” bandwagon to settle scores as well, and the rivalries are so complex that it takes some diagramming to keep it all straight. Here goes: Pastor Solomon Male of Arise for Christ Ministry accused Pastor Robert Kayanja of the Rubaga Miracle Center Cathedral of being a homosexual, along with “a group of other pastors.” Kayanja’s Rubaga Miracle Center is a very large and prosperous megachurch in Kampala…

Kayanja’s personal aide, Chris Muwonge, was allegedly kidnapped and tortured by armed men and held for five days. His captors allegedly wanted him to make a video statement accusing Kayanja of molesting young boys. Kayanja accused his rival, Pastor Michael Kyazze of the Omega Healing Center of being behind the plot. Kyazze’s assistant, Pastor Robert Kayiira was arrested earlier for trying to sneak a laptop computer into Kayanja’s Miracle Center. His close friend? Pastor Solomon Male. Kayanja reportedly believes that Martin Ssempa is involved in the allegations against him as well.

I blogged on Kayanja here; he has long-standing links with Benny Hinn. Pastor Martin Ssempa held a high-profile anti-gay rally in 2007, and he works closely with Rick Warren; Warren’s wife has gushed over him as her “brother”. Oundo was apparently “saved” at Ssempa’s church.

Six statements against Kayanja have now been retracted, and police have dropped their investigation, calling the claims “unbelievable”. Instead, the rival pastors are being themselves investigated for allegedly setting him up; the New Vision reported on this on Monday, including a quote from Ssempa:

Ssempa said for years he had assisted victims of homosexuality, a job he described as tough. “I pray that the country will not forget the boys. There should be justice for boys who have been abused sexually just like for girls,” he stated.

“I have no problem with Kayanja. He has never sodomised me,” Ssempa said. “It is the children who came to us and confessed. It is those who are seeking justice.”

Ssempa said he was concerned that some people in Kayanja’s church were highly-placed in the Police force. “But we have faith in democracy and justice,” he added.

The police have now warned the pastors under investigation not to make any further public comments on the matter, and in a new twist one alleged victim who retracted his is now saying he only did so under duress. Bizarrely, he is also complaining that a certain woman is falsely claiming to be his mother.

Kayanja enjoys the support of Uganda’s risible Minister for Ethics and Integrity, Dr. James Nsaba Buturo; a few days ago it was reported that he

has warned pastor Solomon Male of Arising for Christ ministries on false allegations the pastor is making on fellow pastors causing divisionism among Ugandans.

Dr. Buturo says that Male over the years has been pointing fingers at fellow pastors accusing them even when he had no facts. The minister says that an example is the recent incident where Male accused Pastor Robert Kayanja of sodomy. Buturo says this did not only tarnish the name on Kayanja but also the whole country.

A letter to a newspaper in response to this expresses some scepticism:

I would like to challenge Nsaba Buturo as to why he comes out only when allegations are made against Pastor Kayanja. Similar allegations have been made against many men of God before but he did not comment. The most recent example is that of Catholic Priest, Fr. Anthony Musaala against whom similar allegations were made by a former homosexual who is now an associate of Pastor Male.

Is Pastor Male trying to use sodomy as a tool against his colleagues in order to pull them down? And why is Nsaba Buturo only defending Pastor Kayanja? Is it because he goes to the Pentecostal churches and not the Catholic churches? Why the double standards?

Just yesterday, the South Africa Times ran a piece lamenting the extravagence and corruption of Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni (another close associate of Rick Warren). Doubtless he’s quite content to have his people fretting over gays under the bed rather than subjecting him to critical scrutiny.

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A predictable opinion from Metropolitan Seraphim, Greek Orthodox bishop of Piraeus; a few days ago he

said that the Bilderbergers represented a “criminal cabal of world Zionism and its efforts to set up a cruel world dictatorship under the headship of Lucifer”.

I last blogged on the rancorous Seraphim here; it’s remarkable that such an abusive person can achieve high office in the national church of a modern European country.

The recent Bilderberg meeting in Greece was also protested by LAOS, the “Popular Orthodox Rally”; I blogged on this group in 2005.

Meanwhile, baroque anti-Bilderberg conspiracy mongering is also being pushed by WorldNetDaily (although minus the anti-Semitism), in order to flog some books:

Do you ever wonder what all those secret organizations – the Trilateral Commission, the Council of Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergs – are doing and why? And what it means in your life?

Here’s the answer: The “Brotherhood of Darkness” book in which Stanley Monteith outlines the people, power and purses that, in many opinions, control nations and destinies, which was in the No. 1 spot among best-sellers at WND’s online Superstore this week.

Monteith writes in his incredible but true publication how the secret societies direct the courses of civilization and affect your life.

Also:

“Hope of the Wicked: Master Plan to Rule the World” by Ted Flynn is in third place.

Hundreds of pages, photographs and footnotes document the convergence of multinational corporations, foundations and political and social instruments to assemble a one-world government and the “New World Order.”

I blogged Flynn’s book here.

(However, as Terry Krepel has noted, there is one media-shy think-tank with political links that WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah doesn’t see as part of the conspiracy: the Council for National Polity. That’s apparently because he’s a member.)

A March report in the EUObserver included a quote which has been seized on as evidence of a Bilderberg hidden hand:

A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group – an informal club of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by [former EU commissioner Etienne] Davignon – could also “improve understanding” on future action, in the same way it helped create the euro in the 1990s, he said.

Blogger “Cranmer” described this as

an astonishing disclosure, especially in the light of all those alleged Bilderbergers who have dismissed as ‘conspiracy theorists‘ those who have ventured to suggest the group has any such agenda to ‘improve understanding’ (a distinctly Orwellian inculcation), or that they ‘helped create the euro’ (by helping to remove those who opposed it…).

However, the “disclosure” becomes less “astonishing” when you read the rest of the Davignon quote:

“When we were having debates on the euro, people [at Bilderberg events] could explain why it was worth taking risks and the others, for whom the formal policy was not to believe in it, were not obliged not to listen and had to stand up and come up with real arguments.”

In other words, it helped to create the Euro by…facilitating frank private debate between people with different views. How sinister (Cranmer’s claim that the group “helped to remove” anti-Euro figures is unsupported by the source he links to, and his suggestion that members deny seeking to “improve understanding” makes no sense, even without the vacuous Orwell reference).

I’m all in favour of keeping a sceptical eye on what political and economic power-players are up to, and I have no problem with using such conflabs to publicise the need for accountability (as with the G20 protests). It’s also doubtless the case that networks between and within organisations help to promote particular ideas (Mike Peter’s 1996 essay on Bilderberg, originally in Lobster magazine, treats it in this way). But let’s keep some sense of proportion: where’s the evidence that Bilderberg meetings give decisions made in the real world any extra protection from public scrutiny and opposition? And while we may be curious about how important these meetings actually are, what exactly in political life remains mysterious without recourse to “Bilderberg” as an explanation?

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Kathryn Joyce has a typically insightful article at Double X, on attitudes to domestic violence at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church. She quotes some audio clips of Teaching Pastor Tom Holladay (who is married to Warren’s sister), who explains that domestic abuse means regular beatings, not a one-off attack, and that a woman is never justified in seeking a divorce on grounds of violence:

“There’s something in me that wishes there was a Bible verse that says if they abuse you in this and such kind of way then you can leave them,” said Holladay, but sadly, he concluded, there wasn’t.

Kathryn adds, tellingly:

The clips were removed from the website this spring, in the months after Warren, the casual-Friday face of “new Evangelicals,” spoke at President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

This kind of PR-conscious revisionism seems to be something of a pattern with Warren and co.

Kathryn also tells the story of Sheri Ferber, a Saddleback member who asked a pastor for advice about her violent husband; the pastor’s response was to warn the husband about her “gossip”. Ferber seventually separated from her husband, who filed for divorce after reminding her that “The wife’s body does not belong to her alone, but also to her husband” (first half of 1 Corinthians 7:4). When Ferber then went on to file a police complaint, she experienced a “slow freeze” and a lack of support when her ex-husband – who originally belonged to a different church and was under a restraining order – joined the Saddleback choir. Kathryn asks Holladay about this; his response is (it seems to me) creepy and passive-aggressive:

“I don’t think I can sit here and call her a liar. I don’t know what she’s been through and is going through. As a church, our goal is healing. It might make her feel good to see her story in a newspaper. It might make her feel bad—depending on how you report it. It doesn’t sound untrue to me, but you’re obviously hearing one side of the story, and it sounds like someone’s added a layer of hurt. We don’t want to go down roads that would hurt this person more.”

Ferber now attends her ex-husband’s former Pentecostal church, and I was struck by this observation:

Ironically, the family that stuck by her wasn’t Saddleback, but [her ex-husband’s] Life Church, which responded swiftly to the abuse by pulling Bradley from leadership and later accompanying Ferber to court: something Ferber attributes to the difference between Baptist and Pentecostal approaches to women’s roles in the church.

Read the whole thing here; Kathryn deftly guides us through the wider context of marriage teaching and wifely submission within conservative evangelicalism.

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An obscure person in Jeddah by the name of Adel Mohammed S Alshareef has helpfully provided the ammo for another “Muslim apocalypse” horror story: on 8 May a German news agency reported that a Saudi Arabian had attempted to patent a satellite tracking device which could be inserted under the skin. He included in his application a “Model B”, in which the chip could contain a deadly poison that could be released by remote control; the patent was consequently rejected on ethical grounds.

The report then made its way into English, and featured in a German English-language site called The Local:

“In recent times the number of people sought by security forces has increased,” the Jeddah-based inventor wrote in his summary.

The tiny electronic device, dubbed the “Killer Chip” by Swiss daily Tagesanzeiger, would be suited for tracking fugitives from justice, terrorists, illegal immigrants, criminals, political opponents, defectors, domestic help, and Saudi Arabians who don’t return home from pilgrimages. 

“I  apply for these reasons and for reasons of state security and the security of citizens,” the statement reads.

The story was from there picked up by Fox and WorldNetDaily, which both homed in on the Saudi angle; right-wing blogs have now added some predicable commentary. Jihad Watch describes the device as “Another great Islamic invention”, while Atlas Shrugs gives us:

ISLAM PLAYS WITH TECHNOLOGY

Is this what Obama means about their great “contributions” to society.  Instant death chip implant. Perfect ……. Christians, Jews stay out of Islamic ORs.

Joel Richardson, however, outdoes both with the suggestion that the proposed device was predicted in the Book of Revelation:

He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. Revelation 13:14-15

The documentation for the invention is available from DEPATISnet, the German patent database; the document is numbered DE102007051890A1, and is entitled “Implantation von elektronischen Chips in den Körper des Menschen zum Zwecke der Bestimming seines geografischen Aufenthaltsortes”. Unfortunately I cannot read German, and even if I could I wouldn’t be in a position to judge if the proposed device is technologically viable. Details of the lethal “Model B” appear on page two, paragraph 0007 (1).

The abstract gives the inventor’s list of those whom he believes need to be tracked:

Zusammenfassung: In der letzten Zeit hat sich die Anzahl der von den Sicherheitsbehörden gesuchten Personen vermehrt. Darunter sind Flüchtlinge der Justiz, darunter sind Terroristen, darunter sind Personen, die dem System der Aufenthaltsregularien und der Arbeitserlaubnis zuwiderhandeln, und Arbeitskräfte, die den Obhutspersonen entfliehen (AdÜ: Regulation der Obhutsperson für auslän dische Arbeitskräfte in Saudi-Arabien), sowie der Staatssicherheit gefährliche Personen, seien as nun Personen der politischen Opposition oder Abtrünnige usw. Zusätzlich zu diesen vorab genannten Personen kommen noch die Personnen, die nach der Saison der großen Pilgerfahrt (Hagj) und kleinen Pilgerfahrt (Omra) –dies ist spezifisch für Saudi-Arabien in diesem Fall – zurückbleiben.

Judging from a Babelfish translation, it looks as though the Local report was slightly distorted; the inventor is worried about pilgrims coming to Saudi Arabia and remaining, not Saudi Arabians using pilgrimage to escape from the country. From what I can see, he also doesn’t suggest who exactly ought to have the “Model B” version inserted.

A comment added to one news report noted that in the 1970s Jack Vance imagined a society in which the population was obliged to wear explosive collars; there are obvious parallels with other science-fiction stories (Escape from New York comes to mind). The idea is of course  inherently repellent on human rights grounds, and in the real world there is also no way such a thing could be made safe from accidental detonation through injury or due to other electronic sources that might trigger it. However, the inventor claims to be worried about “Terroristen”, and this is a fear which has proved to be corrosive to higher ideals in a number of countries. If he has come up with his invention at the behest of the Saudi government (or the anti-Christ), it is strange that he should be seeking a European patent as a private person.

(1) The document initally appears as a one-page unsearchable pdf, which can be misleading; to see the other pages you need to click on a forward button or click on “Load Full Document”.

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On 5 May I noted the following quote from a WND article:

Talk radio host Michael Savage is considering legal action against Britain’s top homeland security official after she released today a list grouping him with terrorists and neo-Nazi murderers banned from entry because the government believes their views might provoke violence.

…The others on the list are Jewish extremist Mike Guzovsky…

I suggested this reference was an oversight; Guzovsky, also known as “Yekutel Ben Yaacov” (spelt in a variety of ways) has in the past been the subject of several positive articles by WND‘s Jerusalem correspondent Aaron Klein.

And it seems I was right; the entry has now been amended to

…The others on the list are Jewish nationalist Mike Guzovsky…

Here’s the ADL on Guzovsky:

Under Guzovsky’s leadership, Kahane Chai has signaled its support of a bombing incident directed against American Jewish supporters of the Middle East peace process. On January 5, 1994, between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m., one bomb was placed outside a New York build ing that houses Americans for Peace Now, Habonim, Israel Horizons, and the Progressive Zionist Caucus. It did not explode, but was later defused by police.

A second bomb, placed outside the building which houses the New Israel Fund, exploded but there were no injuries. Notes left with the bombs declared that a Jewish “civil war has begun.” The notes also spoke of the “spilling of blood in Israel” and criticized the Israeli Government as being “too liberal.”” The notes were signed by the “Shield of David” and the “Maccabee Squad.” A press release issued by Kahane Chai provided its traditional response subsequent to such incidents: the organization “denied responsibility” for the attacks, but “refuse[d] to condemn the act. Responding to a reporter’s query regarding the incident, Guzovsky said, “We don’t condemn anybody targeting Jewish groups which, in our opinion, caused the deaths of so many Jews at the hands of Arab terrorists that they embrace.”

In February 1994 he opined that Rabin was a traitor and that “if violence has to be used to prevent this destruction of the Jewish state, so be it”; he also later spoke favourably of Baruch Goldstein, perpertrator of the Hebron massacre.

Curiously, however, WND has not explained why the “extremist” label is inappropriate for this man. Neither has it offered any defence of Guzovsky against the UK government ban, despite providing predictable support to Michael Savage.

(Hat tip: Conwebwatch)

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WorldNetDaily has found another worthy book to promote:

The Beatles meteoric rise, unprecedented in popular culture and unrivaled nearly four decades after the band broke up, is at least partly explained, says a new book, by a pact John Lennon made with the Devil.

In “The Lennon Prophecy,” author Joseph Niezgoda reveals that Lennon himself, obsessed with the occult, magic, numerology and being bigger than Elvis Presley, confided in his friend Tony Sheridan that he made such a deal. The book also makes the case that the “death clues” long associated with Paul McCartney were actually subliminal messages hinting at Lennon’s fate.

Niezgoda claims that the pact was made in December 1960, and was fulfilled twenty years later, when the demonically-possessed Mark Chapman shot Lennon dead:

“I have always had to deal with the constant conflict of my love for their music and the evil that I perceive surrounds it,” he told WND. “The only difference is that I have tried to define or make sense of it with the help of this book.”

Niezgoda does not appear to be promoting any particular religious view, but the idea of evil around certain popular music echoes an established genre of fundamentalist paperbacks which see rock music as a manifestation of Satan’s purposes; this essay by Johnny Marr overviews some earlier efforts, including Bob Larson’s Rock & Roll: The Devil’s Diversion and Jeff Godwin’s Dancing With Demons. Observes Marr:

In the realm of crackpot literature, few sub-genres surpass anti-rock ‘n’ roll literature in sheer quality. Like the finest fringe literature, they are suffused with paranoia, rabid passion and a refreshingly original take on conventional logic. Their philosophy combines the best elements of fundamentalist zealotry, Communist conspiracy, and bizarre pseudo science.

More recently, we’ve had William Josiah Sutton’s Ancient Prophecies About Mysticism Hollywood and the Music Industry (includes details of “Mick Jagger’s Connection with the Marxist Fabian Society and the Occult Revolution”) and various internet essays, such as Donald Phau’s “The Satanic Roots of ‘Rock'”  (“The year 1967 marked a significant escalation in open cultural warfare against the youth of the United States.”), and other pieces that have been linked from this site (includes “Elvis or Evils?” and “The Dixie Chicks are of the Devil“).

Alas, reviews of Niezgoda’s research have been somewhat negative; Buck McPherson of the Anniston Star complains that

Niezgoda sees clues where there are none (backwards lyrics, cryptic album artwork, etc.), and in most cases, makes a fool of himself trying to prove these far-reaching and preposterous connections. He even alleges that the band’s album title Revolver foreshadowed how Lennon would be killed. Is it so hard to believe that Lennon, along with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr simply wrote brilliant pop songs at the same time that pop music was quickly becoming a cultural phenomenon?

Another reviewer calls it “easily the funniest book I have ever read.”

Niezgoda has a website here, where he expounds on seven clues which supposedly indicate Lennon’s deal with the devil. These include a picture of Lennon standing near a sign that says “The Best Way to Go is by M & D Co[aches]”. Niezgoda explains:

A photo from the Magical Mystery Tour album shows John walking in front of a sign which reads ‘THE BEST WAY TO GO IS BY M&DC’ or MDC. It turns out to be a fatal message because it was Mark David Chapman (initials MDC) who killed John. This picture is unedited and is shown just as it appeared in the 1967 album.

Another album features Lennon’s face on the label; surrounded by the grooves of the various tracks, is this clearly shows “picture of John at the center of a target with the record’s center-hole resting right between his eyes” (Actually, the hole is on the left side of his nose, but  let’s not quibble). The book is published by New Chapter Press, although it does not currently feature on the company’s website.

This kind of nonsense is of course typical WND fare; in 2006 it promoted a documentarycalled Rape of the Soul, which claimed that the Roman Catholic sex abuse crisis was “tied to embedded Satanic and occultic imagery in its artwork”.

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Earlier this year the Sun ran a front-page splash claiming that Sir Alan Sugar was on a hitlist of British Jews to be targeted by Muslim extremists, based on evidence from self-styled “anti-terror” investigator Glen Jenvey gleaned from a Muslim discussion forum. Blogger Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads discovered that the “evidence” had in fact been planted by Jenvey; the result was that the Sun removed the story and Sugar threatened legal action.

I’ve written a number of blog entries on the subject since then, noting subsequent developments and making a few minor contributions of my own (such as here), which Tim has used and acknowledged. In particular, Tim unearthed a recording of Jenvey talking to a journalist, in which he boasts of links with Patrick Mercer MP, a British diplomat named Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, and a lecturer named Michael Starkey (a distant cousin of Cowper-Coles). Cowper-Coles and Mercer have distanced themselves from Jenvey, but there has not been much media interest, besides short pieces in the Media section of the Guardian and in Private Eye. Perhaps this is because so many media outlets have relied on Jenvey’s material that they’d all rather not talk about it (he was even used by Newsnight once); perhaps there is also some annoyance at a blogger showing them up. Since the initial revelation we’ve seen Jenvey’s public response: a bizarre conspiracy theory about the Guardian, which was helpfully promoted for him by an evangelical journalist named Jeremy Reynalds; and his private responses: a physical threat against Tim, and fake comments to blogs supposedly from the Daily Mail accusing Tim of being a sex criminal.

The main story is ongoing, but the saga has also sparked some spin-offs of interest. For my own part, I have been playing close attention to one of Jenvey’s few remaining defenders, the virulent anti-Muslim blogger Paul Ray (aka “Lionheart”); while Jenvey has kept a low profile of late, he has shown an interest through Facebook in “March for England”, with which Ray also has close links.

Meanwhile, Tim has been drawn into a dispute with A-list conservative bloggers Iain Dale and Paul Staines. He and they have clashed on numerous issues over the years; most notably last year, when Staines used fellow Tory-blogger and lawyer Donal Blaney to convey a libel threat (a typical course of action which has more than once exposed the humbug of the “libertarian” Tory right when it comes to free speech and critical investigation on-line). In the wake of Jenvey’s malicious behaviour, however, Dale apparently agreed to help Tim get into contact with Patrick Mercer but then failed to deliver. Tim claims Dale misled him in the process, and Tim went to some efforts to get through to Dale how serious the situation was. Dale’s response was to publish a blog entry accusing Tim of being a stalker, which was picked up by various sympathetic blogs. Tim left a response on one, which was followed soon after by a comment from a certain Adam Macqueen addressed to another commentator:

Oh my god! You made eye contact with the nutter on the bus! You should never, ever do this. I found this out the hard way a few months back…

This is actually shockingly shabby, for reasons that Tim went on to note:

In one of those coincidences that continues to make life delightful, Adam MacQueen is the man responsible for Private Eye taking credit for the discovery of the connection between the ‘Richard Tims’ alias and Glen Jenvey.

It was Jenvey who finally lost it and started accusing me of paedophilia… i.e. because I took the risk on the story for which MacQueen took credit.

Tim then sent an email to Macqueen, who responded that he was justified in calling Tim a “nutter”

Because you obsessively trawl the internet responding to every single comment you dislike.

I complained about Private Eye‘s failure to credit Tim for his research at the time; to find that the journalist concerned would further stoop to such conduct is disheartening. PE‘s editor Ian Hislop is a bit snotty about blogs and the internet, but among bloggers there is great respect for the magazine’s ability to spotlight hypocrisy and corruption in an amusing manner, and for its aggressive stand against the absurdities of UK libel law. This, then, is something of a kick in the teeth.

There is evidence that Macqueen has sympathies with Dale and with Staines, whose own blog until recently carried comments accusing Tim of supposed secret political links. Tim complained about these claims, as well as Dale’s, to MessageSpace, an ad service which is used by a number of conservative bloggers, including Dale – Staines is connected with it, and the Chief Information Officer is a certain Jag Singh. Although Staines has apparently now removed the offending comments, Tim’s complaint to MessageSpace was met with a joke homosexual advance from one of Singh’s minions.

The full account can be read here.

UPDATE: Since the above, Dale has been waving lawyers at Tim, complaining of “harrassment” and (inevitably) making a vague accusation of libel. Dale has also told his readers (while attempting to appear non-boastful about it) about a recent Private Eye lunch he attended:

It was good to see Adam Macqueen again. He worked for me briefly (don’t they all?!) at Politico’s many moons ago and is now one of the Eye’s main journalists. He is also writing a history of the magazine to mark its 50th anniversary, and blogs HERE. An all round good guy.

The lads all stick together, eh?

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