Bartholomew's Notes

From the Telegraph:

The leaders of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) have been “deeply frustrated” after lawyers advised them not to name 39 convicted criminals because it would breach the convicts’ right to a family and private life, and could amount to an “unfair” punishment.

…However, lawyers advised that a precedent set by a 2003 test case involving Essex Police meant that the criminals could not be named.

An agency spokeswoman said: “Soca is not entitled to punish and, where there have been no media reports of financial reporting order cases [which require offenders to provide monthly details of their bank accounts], the information cannot properly be said to be in the public domain.

“The information would therefore only become known to the public in this context due to the actions of Soca and we consider that, in unreported cases at least, there would be an interference with Article Eight rights.”

Two cases already reported by the media were allowed to be revealed.

Soca wished to publicise the criminals’ names so that “the public could inform the police if they suspected they were engaged in illicit activity which was not being declared”.

This advice seems to me to be bizarre. How can be it be allowed for “the media” to publicise the identities of criminals but not someone else? Also, Soca has provided a motivation other than “to punish”, while in contrast we all know that some newspapers are motivated by a punitive spirit – just yesterday I blogged on Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre’s claim that

Since time immemorial public shaming has been a vital element in defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour…For hundreds of years, the press has played a role in that process.

“Acceptable social behaviour” clearly includes refraining from criminality. And what counts as “the media”? There was a case a few months ago in which a controversial right-wing blogger was found guilty of drink-driving; he was also pilloried by other bloggers, and one even went along to the court to see for himself. The case was also reported in some newspapers; but what if it hadn’t been? Would the bloggers (presuming they found out about it by other means) who mocked and scorned him be regarded as “the media”, or as having breached his right to a family and private life and so liable for hefty damages?

There is already a limitation on reporting criminal convictions in the UK – in 1974 it was legislated that to disclose a “spent conviction” (an old minor conviction that had been removed from someone’s record after a period of time) could be libellous if “malice” could be proven as the motive. I’ve yet to find any actual libel case which has followed from this; this means it remains unclear how “malice” can be proven or disproven, or what exactly “disclosure” means when the media may have put information about a case in the public domain at the time of conviction – perhaps nationally and very prominently – or when the offence was some kind of public protest.

I discussed my own views on the right to privacy vs the right to free speech in a blog posting here. Although I’m not usually much of fan of his, I commended an essay on the subject by the right-libertarian Sean Gabb.

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A couple of bits of libel news in latest Private Eye (1223). First, an article (p. 26) that gives a bit more background to the New Statesman‘s decision to remove a blog posting that linked to suppressed articles about Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi reposted on Wikileaks, and to offer a public confession of the linked articles’ inaccuracy (I blogged on this here):

The American journalists who run Wikileaks checked out the Auchi story before putting it on their site. They watched the censorship in London in amazement and decided to act. According to a letter seen by Index on Censorship, they tell Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman, that any apology suggesting the reports contained “substantial inaccuracies” would be libellous. “Such a statement will defame the professionalism of our investigative reportes and writers,” they wrote. “These include editor Julian Assange and former Pentagon aide John Shaw”.

If this succeeds, it would mean that caving in to a libel threat would no longer be the cheapest option, with the result that the British media would be obliged to show a bit more backbone. However, while I can appreciate Wikileaks‘ intent, this seems to me ill-conceived, as I noted before. If I say that a certain book contains inaccuracies, does that mean that anyone who gave the same book a good review can now sue me on the grounds that I have “defamed their professionalism” by offering a contrary opinion? Or if someone writes inaccuracies about me (whether libellous or not), will I risk being sued simply for daring to put the record straight publicly, if I cannot prove my version of events? The report continues:

Anthony Julius, of Princess Diana fame, has offered his services free to journalists who are sued by Auchi or feel the need to protect their reputations by suing the Observer, the New Statesman or anyone else.

A second report in the Eye (p. 6) deals with another aspect of UK libel law: the absurd size of the costs involved. Recently the Guardian was forced to pay a out small amount in damages due to inaccuracies in a report about Tesco (as I blogged here) – according to the Eye “thought to be no more than £5,000”. However, the paper has also been presented with a bill from Tesco’s lawyers’ (the notorious Carter-Ruck) for £800,000:

On 22 April, for instance, Nigel Tait made £100 by “watching item on Channel 4 News“. On 12 June he spent 12 minutes “reading/considering” an article in the Eye, which earned him another £100…One item in the £808,000 bill reads “Purchase of Guardian newspaper, 80p”.

There was also the advice of a barrister, worth exactly “£94,00.01”.

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From the Press Gazette:

A High Court judge accused by Paul Dacre of bringing in a privacy law by the back door was defended today by Lord Falconer, the former constitutional affairs secretary.

Daily Mail editor Dacre has accused Mr Justice Eady of using the Human Rights Act to curb the Press’s freedom to expose the moral shortcomings of those in high places.

…But Lord Falconer, who left the Cabinet when Gordon Brown took over as prime minister, said: “I think society now puts a value on privacy. There are certain things in life that should be private,” he told Today.

“For example, if I am a singer or an actor and I have a miscarriage, is that something that people should know about in the world?

“Of course, if I’m acting hypocritically or I’m accountable, or there’s something that may affect what I do in my public life which emerges from my private life, that should be published.

“But there are things which are private and just as we don’t want the state to know everything about us, do we want things that are legitimately private to be made public? I don’t think we do.”

The background to this the “Max Mosley case”; Mosley, who heads Formula One racing, was photographed some months ago cavorting with prostitutes in an S&M scenario; the News of the World alleged, but was unable to prove, that there had been “Nazi” overtones, which was interesting for psychoanalyists as Mosley is the son of 1930s British fascist leader Oswald Mosley. Mosley successfully sued under privacy legislation, and was awarded £60,000 – more money than most people earn over several years. He’s now planning a libel action based on the “Nazi” accusation, claiming that in fact he was merely indulging in “German prison” roleplay.

Dacre’s attack on Eady was forthright, but also laced with pomposity:

But what is most worrying about Justice Eady’s decision is that he is ruling that – when it comes to morality – the law in Britain is now effectively neutral, which is why I accuse him, in his judgments, of being “amoral”.  

In the sporting celebrity case, he rejected the idea that adultery was a proper cause for public condemnation.

Instead, he declared that because family breakdown was now commonplace, there was a strong argument for “not holding forth about adultery” or, in other words, attaching no greater inherent worth to marriage than to any other lifestyle choice.

…Since time immemorial public shaming has been a vital element in defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour, helping ensure that citizens – rich and poor – adhere to them for the good of the greater community.  For hundreds of years, the press has played a role in that process.  It has the freedom to identify those who have offended public standards of decency – the very standards its readers believe in – and hold the transgressors up to public condemnation.  If their readers don’t agree with the defence of such values, they would not buy those papers in such huge numbers.

The idea of British tabloids “defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour” seems to me both laughable and sinister; however, I’m not keen on the likes of Justice Eady and Lord Falconer deciding what I shouldn’t be allowed to know about, either.

Dacre’s speech echoes an attack made by former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey in July, which I blogged here. As Dacre notes, Eady is also responisble for a judgement in favour of a Saudi billionaire which has led to the US passing a law rejecting “libel tourism”.

I also wrote more about the subject of privacy and free speech here, noting some interesting hypothetical examples raised by (cough) UK right-libertarian Sean Gabb.

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I blogged on several anti-Obama neo-Pentecostal “spiritual warnings” that appeared in the run-up to the election; one that I missed was a warning from Rev. Mbijiwe Mwenda, whose thoughts on the subject were channelled to the US public by Lee J. Grady of Charisma magazine. Mwenda concentrated on Obama’s ties to Raila Odinga, who is presented as a malignant figure of whom “some say he is a Muslim secretly”. Of course, since Mwenda is a man of God there is no need to wonder if he has a political agenda of his own. Mwenda warned Grady that “something is about to go wrong in your country”; this can’t be a long-term problem, though, since according to Mwenda’s website “We are living in the last seconds of the last minute of the last hour of the endtimes”.

Mbijiwe Mwenda is also known as “Mwenda Muthuri Mbijiwe Wonders”; according to his bio, he

did his theological/pastoral training for two (2) years in the All Nations For Christ Bible Institute Int’l (ANFCBII), founded by the late Archbishop Benson Andrew Idahosa, in Benin City, Nigeria, West Africa. He also attended the Freedom Bible College (FBC), founded by Rev. Abraham Chigbundu, GO, Voice of Freedom Ministries Int’l, in the same city and graduated with a Deliverance Arts Diploma.

The late Benson Idahosa is famous in neo-Pentecostal circles globally; Chigbundu describes himself as “an outstanding teacher and preacher in Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance Ministry since 1981 with undeniable testimonies, signs and wonders following his ministry”, who “introduced systematic deliverance in Ghana and the black community in London respectively.”

Mwenda’s books include God’s Supernatural Power to Make Wealth, Understanding Dreams and Visions, and Identifying and Breaking Sexual Altars. Here are a couple of extracts I gleaned:

A lot is going on in this matter of sex in dreams. This simply signifies that a spirit husband or wife is in one’s life …There is this girl I had about, who has never made love with a man. But as far as sex is concerned she knows everything. This is because almost every night she made love to a certain man whose face she had never seen. She said that the penetrations were so real that she fears that the spirit broke her virginity.

There was this girl who loved to sleep more that anything. Almost 90% of her day was spent in bed because every time she slept her spiritual sex mate would make love to her, which was more than anything she ever desired. On the day of her deliverance serpentine spirits were manifesting, but she was set free…Sex in dreams has caused miscarriages and barrenness; it has hindered the unmarried from getting married. It also cause low sperm counts in men. If you are in such situation, I suggest that you go for deliverance.

Also:

I had in the other village that an elderly fried who was very rich. He said that his former friends, three in numbers, who were long dead, had appeared to him in dreams for a period of close to a month and each of them was complaining that he had abandoned their families since they died. “His fried” demanded that he must buy foodstuffs for their families and visit them. He did this to the three families. A few months later this elderly friend died too. Clearly, a death covenant and familiar spirits with the dead were the medium of contact for those demonic dreams.

Mwenda has also dabbled in political analysis, with America fear no evil-The world is counting on you. This book, which was published in 2007, commends the USA’s role in the world in opposition to terrorism. Mwenda commends three American “inspirations”: John Hagee, Joel Osteen, and Benny Hinn.

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From the Daily Telegraph:

Ten years ago there were few cases of children stigmatised by witchcraft. But since then the numbers have grown at an alarming rate and have reached an estimated 15,000 in Akwa Ibom state alone.

Some Nigerians blame the increase on one of the country’s wealthiest and most influential evangelical preachers. Helen Ukpabio, a self-styled prophetess of the 150-branch Liberty Gospel Church, made a film, widely distributed, called End of the Wicked. It tells, in graphic detail, how children become possessed and shows them being inducted into covens, eating human flesh and bringing chaos and death to their families and communities.

Mrs Ukpabio, a mother of three, also wrote a popular book which tells parents how to identify a witch. For children under two years old, she says, the key signs of a servant of Satan are crying and screaming in the night, high fever and worsening health – symptoms that can be found among many children in an impoverished region with poor health care…She denies that her teachings and films could encourage child abuse.

The article also explains that some children

are held in churches, often on chains, and deprived of food until they “confess” to being a witch.

The article goes on to describe the work of Gary Foxcroft, the British co-founder of Stepping Stones Nigeria. This organisation works with the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network, which runs a refuge for children accused of witchcraft and tries to persuade parents to take back their children (the pic of the flyer above comes from the Stepping Stones website). Foxcroft’s efforts will be highlighted in a documentary on British television on Wednesday, entitled Saving Africa’s Witch Children.

I blogged on Ukpabio last year, and just a few days ago I noted the abusive comments I had received from her followers, including from readers who identified themselves as members of her family. One commentator told me that he has “personally come in contact with a child witch in my extended family who publicly made confessions on her witchcraft involvements”. In my original piece, I suggested it would be good if some of the big-name international evangelists who hold “crusades” in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa – such as Reinhard Bonnke – were to speak out against the hysteria. That doesn’t appear to have happened yet.

A recent report in the Nigerian Daily Independent gives more information about Ukpabio’s teaching:

…According to Ukpabio, there is white, black, and red witchcraft. She put quite a number of what people know today as secret societies, cult or religions as white witchcraft…“Some of the things they do are believed to have the potential of protecting the member and making him prosperous while harming the others in the work place, business place, school, the neighbourhood, or family…

“In black witchcraft, the spirit gets directly into the human spirit. It can be dropped into someone’s food and it develops. If you are initiated into it, you can do a lot of evil to people in the society…”

She supported this with what the Bible says in the Book of Job, Chapter 41 verses 24 and 25. Ukpabio told the people that the witches practise their craft on their beds (meaning while asleep at night), coveting other peoples’ fields and properties and taking them violently. Ukpabio cited a spot in the Calabar metropolis where she said the marine spirit is holding the people captive…

She said there are a lot of people who practise witchcraft without knowing and that most people become victims of witchcraft because of their ignorance of God, thereby becoming vulnerable to witches and demons. She said the marine spirit is witchcraft, adding, ‘When it enters you, it does not want you to enjoy anything good or be prosperous. If you have the spirit of God in you, you will live to enjoy your life. If you have Jesus, then life will be sweet for you.”

…She… condemned the belief and teaching of some secret cults that people who are good generally and do not bewitch other people or practically harm them cannot be attacked by evil men, evil powers, and witchcraft. “This is a false belief…They look for people who are not involved with God, have not repented or are not working in the vineyard of God. The witches look for the generous and liberal people to harm and destroy,” she said.

The “marine spirit” is probably a reference to indigenous “Mami Wata” beliefs.

I’ve also blogged on child witches in Congo and on a minister famous for getting women to “confess” to being witches in Cameroon.

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From (cough) Fox News:

Critics are blasting the United Nations for hosting a meeting to talk about religious and cultural tolerance sponsored by Saudi Arabia, a country in which the U.S. government has said religious freedom is non-existent.

Following up on an interfaith meeting they held in Madrid in July, the Saudis asked the United Nations to hold a meeting on the “Culture of Peace,” but some think it’s a move to lend support to the defamation of religions resolution that the world body will vote on this fall…

The July Madrid meeting included a call for a “UN Interfaith Council” to mediate religious conflicts, and presumably this “Culture of Peace” meeting is in some way strategizing towards that goal. But who gave the Saudis the idea for that? A July report in the Arab News (don’t say I’m not even-handed) gives some background:

The World Conference on Dialogue opened by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah in Madrid on Wednesday gathered momentum yesterday with a call from the former speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives, Congressman Jose de Venecia Jr., for an interfaith dialogue council to be set up as a formal UN body.

He presented a draft resolution calling on the conference to petition King Abdullah, King Juan Carlos of Spain and Spanish Premier Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to organize a joint Saudi-Spanish request to the UN for an Interfaith Council to promote and oversee “all global, regional and local interfaith dialogues among the great religions, civilizations, cultures, governments… to help resolve politico-religious, sectarian and ethnic conflicts and tensions in various parts of the world.”

And from where did Congressman Jose de Venecia get his inspiration? The answer is in a speech he made:

One of the great missions of Rev. Moon is to see how we can bring about a unification of the great religions of the world…and under the leadership of Rev. Moon – I had the privilege to present to the Security Council last year – a resolution for a dialogue among civilizations, among religions, among cultures, for an interfaith dialogue and I am happy to report to you that the following month, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously approved our resolution calling for an interfaith dialogue among the great religions of the world.

The UN meeting will be held on 11-13 November. According to the UAE National:

King Abdullah’s interfaith debate at UN headquarters will likely become the world’s most well-attended cross-religious parley to date, with as many as 30 heads of state set to talk including George W Bush, the US president, the Saudi monarch and King Juan Carlos of Spain.

And it’s already got off to a promising start, with a Saudi diplomat disavowing the “accusation” that Abdullah had invited Israel…

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Via Mary Glazier, 25 September (as was widely blogged):

Just a few minutes ago Eleanor Roehl, a powerful [Christian] Eskimo intercessor and prophet, called me to say she senses an imminent attack against our nation.  Then Karen Fink came into my office to share the following revelation she had this past Friday with increasing weight on her heart ever since:

She received the scripture Gen. 50:3,”A period of NATIONAL MOURNING”.  She then saw Sarah Palin standing alone and she was mantled with the American flag.  The flag was upside down because things are inverted (upside down) right now.  I knew she was stepping into an office that she was mantled for.”

At this time I have a STRONG sense that we must pray for our President and Vice President and their families.  Also pray for the candidates running for election.  Something is imminent so we MUST pray to avert what is coming or to minimize it’s impact.

This is a tricky one: when prophesized disasters fail to materialize the explanation is usually that God changed his mind due to intercession – the Biblical examples are Jonah at Ninevah and King Hezekiah’s recovery from an illness that Isaiah said would kill him. However, if God has acted to prevent the disaster, how come we now have Obama winning an election, while the “mantled” Palin returns to obscurity?

A short time before her prophecy was announced, Roehl was in the UK; the South Wales Argus reports:

MOUNT Pleasant Church in Pontypool recently welcomed a special visitor- a Yupik Innuit woman from Alaska.

Eleanor Roehl is an ordained minister from New Stuyahok, Alaska, where Mount Pleasant Church is affiliated.

Reverend Victor Owens and representatives from his church make the trip to Alaska every January, and this year invited Ms Roehl to come to Wales and share her culture…

Some pics of Roehl’s dance moves at the Indigenous Ministries of Alaska (IMA) Summit can be seen here.

Glazier, meanwhile, as Bruce Wilson has noted, claims to have influenced Sarah Palin through her prayer group, and Palin put her on the  Alaska Suicide Prevention Council.

I blogged on a flurry of warnings from God concerning Obama that were received by neo-Pentecostal leaders just in time for the election here.

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Revised and Amended

Index on Censorship reports:

The New Statesman has removed a post from the blog of political editor Martin Bright after a threat of legal action from Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi.

The controversial businessman raised objections to links in the article to material hosted by Internet whistleblower site Wikileaks, as well as to statements made by Bright in his blog post.

However:

Wikileaks editor Julian Assange has now claimed that the New Statesman, in agreeing to Auchi’s terms, would defame him and Wikileaks by implying that the site’s content was inaccurate.

On first reading, I took this to mean that Wikileaks was arguing that deleting the links amounted to libel, which would be silly because “agreeing to Auchi’s terms” simply implies that there is a potential risk under the UK’s notorious libel laws. However, a commentator below points out that what is actually meant is that Auchi is demanding an apology and an admission that the material on Wikileaks is inaccurate, and that such an apology would be libellous to Wikileaks. Assange continues:

Our organisation’s reputation for professional, accurate investigative journalism is our primary asset.

The intention is to help the New Statesman, but it’s still unlikely to succeed: Bright linked to old material re-posted on Wikileaks from elsewhere, and so its own reputation for “investigative journalism” is neither here nor there. It seems to me that only the actual authors of the articles could claim to have been allegedly defamed by an apology to Auchi.

We all know that UK libel law unfairly favours plaintiffs, and thus that those with large amounts of money or who are friends with certain lawyers can suppress even true and politically relevant information. In the UK, linking to (alleged) libel might be seen as “republishing” the libel, although this hasn’t been tested in court yet. Back in February the pseudo-libertarian blogger Paul Staines threatened to sue Liberal Conspiracy for linking to a posting about him on Tim Ireland’s Bloggerheads, but this turned out to be bluster.

Canadian law, however, has some precedents:

In Lindley v. Delman 25 P. 2d 751 (1933) the showing of a libelous letter and issuance of a request to others to visit a place where the libelous statements could be viewed was held to constitute a publication under the definition of defamation. In Lawrence v. Newberry (1891), 64 L.T. 797 a letter to a newspaper referring to a speech containing defamatory content which was published elsewhere attracted liability to the defendant. Similarly, in Hird v. Wood (1894), 38 S.J. 234 (CA) the defendant was merely sitting beside a placard containing defamatory remarks and drew the attention of others to it which resulted in a finding of liability.

It seems to me, though, that to apply this kind of thing to the internet is Canute-like. If Auchi can go after Bright for linking to the articles on Wikileaks and giving their titles, why not go after Index on Censorship for referencing Wikileaks in general and telling us that the material about Auchi can be found there? Or go after anyone who mentions the Index posting, since the same applies, at one remove? Or anyone who mentions a site that mentions the Index posting, etc., ad absurdum? Also, the Auchi articles on Wikileaks are easily found via Google, so the idea that a direct link from Bright would make any practical difference from a vague allusion that anyone could chase up for themselves is a fiction. Doubtless Auchi’s lawyers (notorious libel specialists Carter-Ruck) would answer it would be best if anyone who writes anything whatsoever about a libel threat becomes liable…

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From the BBC:

A controversial pastor who claimed he could give infertile couples “miracle babies” has failed in a bid to avoid extradition on child abduction charges.

Two High Court judges have rejected Gilbert Deya’s appeal against the order to extradite him to Kenya.  Mr Deya, the self-proclaimed bishop of a church in Peckham, South London, says he faces torture in his native Kenya.

The Kenyan government alleges Mr Deya stole five children between 1999 and 2004.

I’ve blogged on this tragic story several times in the past: as I noted a year ago, Deya claims that his 57-year-old wife – and a number of female congregants – had given birth to “miracle babies”, conceived through prayer and brought to term after a few weeks. Interestingly, women who sought such pregnancies were obliged to travel to Deya’s clinic in an impoverished district of Nairobi, where they were anesthetised before being presented with a baby. Some of the duped women have since had the trauma of having “their” babies removed by the authorities in Kenya and the UK. I gave a fuller account of Deya’s background – including his production of videos with titles like Jesus Healed a Woman with Three Breasts – here.

***

PS: One detail I included in my earlier postings was the supposed claim by Deya that he had cut a deal with the Kenyan Orange Democratic Movement to have the charges dropped and to become Kenya’s High Commissioner to London. Of course this was never going to happen, although I figured that Deya may have made such a boast. However, it must be noted that my source for this was the now-notorious African Press International. The API’s mysterious “Chief Editor Korir” (actually apparently “Sammy Korir“) gave us one of the more entertaining sideshows of the recent American election campaign with a series of broken promises to release a tape recording of Michelle Obama sounding off to him indiscretely over the phone about “white racists” and letting slip evidence of Obama’s birth in Kenya. Korir now claims that someone at Fox News has suppressed the recording, and he has a new promise:

API will now sue Fox News Network for damages and at the same time air the Michelle Obama tape. She has to answer to the American People.

Judging from the dramatic decline in comments, though (down from a thousand to just ten), it appears that Korir’s readership has drifted off, and even WorldNetDaily has lost interest [UPDATE: I spoke too soon – Korir now seems as popular as ever].

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