“Anti-Extremist” Protest in Birmingham

Chants included “Muslims out”

Paul Ray’s Lionheart blog carries footage of another self-described “anti-Islamic extremist” demo, this time in Birmingham city centre. As with the previous outings of this sort (most recently blogged by me here), the protestors mainly sang football chants and patriotic songs; their presence appears to have attracted quite a crowd.

The footage was posted to Youtube by a cetain “railwayendblue”; while he is supportive of the protest and complains bitterly about “Marxists”, he also adds that:

Some of the chanting was bad. And i can’t defend them.. Plus there were many Blacks that i saw that were singing “Muslims Out” as well. Probably 2nd-3rd Generation.

The chant “Muslims out” appears for a moment in this piece of footage (at  9:10), but it does not appear to have been a major theme.  He also tells us that:

 EDL and WDL are not parties, just organisations with supporters on all sides.. Blacks, whites, Hindus all joined in with the sing songs.

This is the “English Defence League” and the “Welsh Defence League”, who accompanied Ray on his trip into “occupied” (his term) east London; “March for England”, which I blogged here and which held a protest in Luton in May, seems to have disappeared off the radar [UPDATE: Actually, a comment below from MfE’s Dave Smeeton explains that they were involved in another event in London, with the United British Alliance).

The protest doubtless capitalised on the recent visit of Anjem Choudary’s “Islamic Road Show” to the city; Choudary is one of the UK’s most notorious Islamist fanatics, and as was widely reported, he managed to get a bewildered-looking 11-year old white boy to recite a conversion to Islam (railwayendblue mentions this incident). Meanwhile, the chairman of Birmingham City Mosque, Mohammed Naseem, refuses to believe that the 7/7 bombers were Muslim extremists – as was noted in a BBC documentary a few days ago; he is now facing calls for his resignation.

Further protests made up from football supporters’ “firms” are planned; a message on the EDL Facebook page from Wayne King tells us that:

…we are hearing another march for brum is being planned for 8th august. we will defo be there and bring all our placards and banners. we will push the march against sharia law as a focus. we have already got a 25 seater coming from luton and many other london firms are on it, qpr and arsenal for defo. so everyone who turned ouy yesterday make the effort again for 8th august, details will follow, if we make enough noise as we have in luton the authorities will be worried about backlashes from our communties when making local decisions,god bless

Shrimp Cracker

As other blogs have noted, conservative British religious blog Cranmer has decided to publicise the latest conspiracy theory from barrister Michael Shrimpton:

Once again the media have missed the point. Swine Flu, like Avian Flu a variant of Spanish Flu, is artificially-developed, ie a bio-weapon. To the author’s knowledge the British and American governments are aware of this, further to tests at Porton Down and CDC in Atlanta, Georgia…

Germany is an intelligence state, not unlike the USSR, whose intelligence services she set up and controlled for most of the Soviet period (Beria, eg reported to Admiral Canaris). The official organs of the German State, including the BND and BfV intelligence agencies, are essentially a front, real control being exerted from Dachau by the Deutcshe Verteidigungs Dienst, by assassination if necessary (they made effective use of Bader-Meinhof and have always loved using Marxists and other assorted nutters). The DVD exerts significant influence in other countries, usually through fronts like the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the Skull and Bones society at Yale (they also recruit at Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge)…

This is vintage Shrimpton; elsewhere, he boasts of how he “expose[d] propaganda operations such as the faked ‘hood’ Abu Ghraib photo”, which was supposedly created by the Syrian secret service, and he claims that French intelligence killed David Kelly. There is also a “Shrimpton Report”, attributed to him but neither confirmed nor denied, which alleges that Madelaine McCann, the British child who went missing in Portugal, was the victim of an international conspiracy. It’s helpfully (and appropriately) reposed on this David Icke forum. His conspiracies also stretch back into the past:

Marx was an agent of the Prussian Secret Service, and Marxism was simply a fake political strategy designed to disrupt British industry, which was successfully adapted as part of Germany’s covert strategy to undermine the Russian Empire, which also involved assassinating Tsar Alexadner, and getting a female German asset to marry Nicholas.

Shrimpton has featured on this blog in the past; in 2008 I noted that he had been a guest speaker at a joint “London Swinton Circle” and “Springbok Club” event. Alan Harvey wrote that:

In his most revealing and powerful address Mr. Shrimpton told something about the international forces which lay behind the abandonment of the British Empire post-World War II, which culminated in the betrayal of Rhodesia, and also gave an in-depth account of some of the little-reported facts about those involved in the recent US Presidential Election.

Harvey’s enemies on the right noticed this event, as I blogged here (scroll down to “Part Four”).

(Hat tip: Harry’s Place)

More on Lionheart in London

Paul Ray has posted further details about the recent “anti-extremist” protest in Whitechapel, which saw a handful of skin-heads and football supporters swaggering along a main road in East London while singing about “Eng-er-lund”. Why were there so few of them?

…sadly, there were deserters amongst the ranks, who chose to entertain themselves in Covent Garden rather than sticking in the ranks with their brothers, and entering enemy territory with the rest of us, as part of the group who had travelled in to protest against Islamic extremists for the sake of their country.

Ray has stern words for these fainthearts:

Desertion is one of the very worst forms of betrayal in the armed forces, with a prison sentence for those who choose to take that path and if we look back to the First World War, deserters were shot for their betrayal against their countrymen.

Ray has a bit of a fetish about imagining those who’ve let him down being shot; when Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs warned “anti-Jihadists” against him last year, he famously opined that LGF was ”nothing less than the equivalent of a Second World War Nazi collaborator who would have been shot because of his treason”. Other critics are always “traitors”, with all that implies.

Ray has posted several videos which chronicle the brave Crusaders as they undertake their beery expedition into darkest East London. Once at Whitechapel, Ray makes a point of filming two Asian women (at 0:38) walking nearby as evidence of “Londonistan” – both are wearing Asian dress, although neither has a headscarf. The sight is apparently enough to elicit a strange grunt from someone in the crowd, though.

But Ray also suggests that all is perhaps not as it seems:

The initial London protest was organised by the illusive internet figure ‘Dave Shaw’, who, it is believed, is either an undcover reporter like Donal Macintyre, or an undercover police officer charged with infiltrating the British people’s protests against Islamic extremists. Either way, he blatantly acted like an ‘agent provocateur‘ which raised the suspicions of many people…Somehow the Met police had prior warning of our initial meeting place, and turned up to question us about the events of the day.

Apparently Shaw had promised thousands of protestors, but neither he nor they turned up.

Ray’s also preparing another protest, for this weekend in Birmingham – he has a promotional video, made up mostly of screenshots from stories about Islamic extremists. At least one shot (at 2:45) is from the BNP website (Ray, who rails against “Paki Muslims“, has offered qualified support for the party), and there are several from the Daily Mail – despite the fact that just a few weeks ago the paper carried an article about violence in Luton that angered him, and which so upset his long-time associate Glen Jenvey that Jenvey has announced his intention to convert to Islam.

We’re also told that the police investigation into Ray for allegedly “stirring up racial hatred” has been dropped. This had been dragging on for 18 months, and was the original reason that catapulted Ray to brief fame in the USA. The legal details remain slightly obscure; he had claimed that the investigation had been dropped a couple of months ago, but it seems that wasn’t quite the end of it. Further details about why the police may have been interested in him can be seen here (I was against a prosecution, by the way).

UPDATE: One of the “deserters” leaves an anonymous comment on Ray’s blog:

People were uncomfortable from the start when it was clear the march had in fact been organised by either an undercover reporter or policeman, given that most of us there were football lads this automatically makes us suspicious. Secondly as soon as the police turned up at that meet within 10 minutes of someone speaking to ‘Dave Shaw’ it’s clear we knew we’d be surrounded by them all day.

Having dealt with the Met on hundreds of occassions with football it was obvious that anyone who decided to go to Whitechapel would be held for hours and pictured heavily, maybe for the likes of yourself that may just be an inconvienience but for others like me we prefer to keep a very low profile.

You call us ‘deserters’ I’d call us ‘clued-up’ having been in this situations at football countless amounts of times.

I won’t be bothering to attend another demo to be honest as it’s clear somebody amongst the group is feeding info to the police and I suggest you worry about that in future rather than insulting lads who did turn up and just found the whole situation suspect.

Further:

Lionheart I dont communicate with anyone who was there on facebook, nor do I particually want my picture on file with the police or the press who can both use it to make us out to look like a group of racist thugs which obviously would go down well with our employers, the truth doesnt matter to either of these groups.

I’m well aware of how intelligence is gathered and it’s for this reason I have no great desire to stand around pointlessly being photographed for hours on end. Most of the football lads were there that day in the hope of having a row if they’re honest, away from the police and getting out of there straight after. It’s all well and good standing there posturing behind police lines but that doesnt do anything for me and never will.

Maybe my agenda didnt fit in to what the day was about but given that the numbers were made up of 90% hooligans I assumed the day was more than just a ’show of force’.

I’m not quite sure what you’re hoping to acheive by alienating the people who didnt want to spend the whole day in a police escort but it just means numbers will dwindle if more people read your blog and see what you’ve written.

Ray responds in the same thread:

…If you do not want your picture on file then you should never decide to attend these events. It is quite obvious that the police would be present taking photographs, i would have thought someone as ‘clued up’ as you would have known this.

The racist thugs is old news, because that fallacy has been smashed over the Luton protest thanks to Craig who was present throughout the London protest from start to finish with his comrades, and there were other black people present in London.

…If you look at the photographs on this blog, you will see that it was not 90% hooligans, it was 100% English/British patriots.

Your even now trying to damage our credibility over your cowardice!

It seems like you only wanted to attend on the day to cause violence, well if you had of stuck around, then you might have been with Marshy and the young lad who got jumped in Whitechapel, to help them out…

Weird Tale on Interfax

Interfax is a sometimes-useful resource for religion news concerning Russia. However, in recent months the English-language level has declined, and reports have become increasingly hard to fathom.

Here’s a recent article explaining some kind of ritual recently held to soothe the broken hearts of lovesick women:

…In course of the performance, the volunteer, a fat man dressed in boxers with hearts, presented an object of unhappy love or “pussy” sitting on a throne in the form of lavatory pan covered with metal paper. Participating girls worshipped him, putting on masks of unhappy love and offering the idol their gifts – various luxurious plates while the pussy ate them, smacking his lips and washing the food down with vodka…

Eh?

US “Prophet” on Porn Charge in Kenya

From the Kenya Daily Nation:

During the day, he was a man of God, preaching the good news to his flock. But at night, he turned into somebody else, engaging in sex orgies and recording them for commercial distribution.

This is the picture that police painted of a 50-year-old American evangelist who was on Wednesday charged with possessing pornographic material.

Mr Thomas Kevin Manton of Dominion International, a church that operates from a Nairobi hotel, was denied bail and remanded in custody until Friday for the police to complete their investigations.

Manton – who is better-known as Thomas Manton IV, has a website here, where he boasts of his prophetic powers:

God has also had him speak profound prophetic-utterances to cities, states, regions and nations – and to more than 40,000+ individuals personally one-by-one- across 21 nations – in just 12 years of full-time ministry. His prophetic writings to 80+ nations; and his amazingly-accurate and detailed prophetic-predictions of NYC’s 9/11; London’s 7/7, Kenya’s economic, social and governmental changes; Great Britain’s political scandals, France President’s assassination attempt; and the Western Bank/Gaza conflicts – amongst numerous others – have alerted millions across the nations to what God is saying concerning unfolding world events today.

Manton also claims to be able to heal the sick and control the weather:

1) Hurricane Floyd ~ 500 miles around! 155 MPH winds~ F5 Hurricane! It would have destroyed the East Coast of Florida! I WENT OUT ON MY BALCONY IN Orlando. THE LORD SAID: Tell it to stop and turn north! Within the next hour, it stopped and turned north! The Weather Channel confirmed that!

2) Dallas Ft. Worth Tornado ~ God said, “Tell it to lift!” I did & it did instantly as the Lord said! Right in front of our eyes! It was going straight toward DFW Airport. But, we stopped it!

And, inevitably, there’s a promise of riches:

New Wealth is going to spring forth in the marketplaces for you, My precious ones, and I will have many new entrepreneurs arise ad become rich for my Gospel’s sake, says the Lord. Many Gospel Financiers will manifest now for the Divine Purposes of supporting My chosen Servants, and funding My chosen works in this next day, for I am preparing this even now, says the Lord God Almighty!

Curiously, however, his biography page gives no personal background details or any indication of links with other pastors.

Manton’s local prophecies have had a political flavour; here’s one from September 2007, posted on the site of African Press International (API is a whole story in itself, by the way):

Mr. Mwai Kibaki has served Me, by serving your nation well, over these last five years as Kenya’s President. And My Hand is even now upon him for the continued reformation of Kenya over the next five years!…Mr. Mwai Kibaki is the man that I have chosen and ordained to see these things through now for the good of your nation.

…[God says] And I will break-down and destroy, from its roots, the pervasive spirit of corruption that has plagued your nation for so many years. I have already attacked it, of late, and broken its legs, but unfortunately it is still lingering on in the mindsets and actions of many people. Nevertheless, I will attack corruption, vehemently and viciously, until I finally destroy it from continuing as a commodity of your societies.

…Look at the man that I have had ruling your nation for the past five years.  He was not looking for your nation’s Presidency for his own personal gain. He saw it as a mission for the good of the people of Kenya. He is already a very wealthy man, and he is content with what he has. He has not taken the wealth of your nation as his own; nor its production to put it into his own pocket. But he has looked continuously to implement ways of bettering the nation of Kenya. And he has done it. And this is what your nation needs, says the Lord!

…Did I not visit Nairobi in a new way on Monday, April 2, 2007 as I used My Prophet here to deal with the demonic-principalities? of Koinange Street Did I not have him prophesy over that area that very night, and declare that it would change immediately? (You may see this yourself! *Order your own Copies of the New Prophecies For Kenya 2007! (Volumes 1~4 on DVD)

In fact, as Paul Gifford notes in his forthcoming book Christianity, Politics, and Public Life in Kenya, Kibaki’s record is not particularly impressive: the director of Kibaki’s Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (unfortunately, that’s “KACC”) earns more than the Secretary General of the United Nations, and the organisation cannot investigate anything post-2003 (p. 18). MPs’ perks and expenses exceed the British in venality by far: apparently car fuel expenses are so excessive it would be cheaper for an MP to visit the border town of Kitale by hired helicopter than actually to drive there (p. 224).

Manton’s website is registered to London, and he has an adress in Bloomfield, New Jersey. In November he visited a certain “Gospel Light Church”, which is run by a Ghanaian pastor in Tottenham.

London Lite on Archbishop and Shariah

A hilariously garbled report from London Lite, a free “newspaper” in London:

The claim that ”Sharia judgements are given legal status only if they are backed in law courts and by the Archbishop of Canterbury” will unite British Anglicans and British Muslims in perplexity.

The actual story is that Civitas claims there are a number of unofficial shariah courts in operation in the UK. Further, it was reported last September that several courts have sought to have their decisions recognised by county courts,  using the 1996 Arbitration Act, which allows for various kinds of private arrangements. And some months before that, Rowan Williams opined that some recognised shariah courts might be “inevitable”.

This is all mashed together to give the absurd rendering above.

“Anti-Extremist” Football Marchers in East London

Anti-Muslim blogger Paul Ray (”Lionheart”) has posted a video of another “anti-extremist march”, this time apparently in Whitechapel, East London. Apparently opposing Islamic extremism means swaggering along a main road belting out football chants, including the inevitable “Eng-er-lund”. The video is difficult to interpret; at certain points the crowd (which includes at least one black member) makes particularly agresssive sounds, but it is not clear exactly why. A few of the participants cover their faces. The whole thing seems to have been at a much smaller scale than the rally in Luton in May, which ended in violence.

From Ray’s tags, it seems this event was down to the “Welsh Defence League” and the “English Defence League”.

Incidentally, Ray has not so far made any comment over the fact that Glen Jenvey, a man whom he has promoted and defended on his blog on a number of occasions, has recently announced his conversion to Islam and willingness to take advice from some notorious extremists.

UPDATE: Ray adds in a comment on his own blog:

We live in a new age, with God doing a new thing on the Earth with His people who are willing to defend Christendom from the hordes of savages in the embodiment of ‘religious moslems’, who have emerged on our land from their Islamic hell holes.

Mark Driscoll Slammed by Baptist Press over Sex Teaching

A number of sites have noted a report from the Baptist Press concerning Pastor Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church; a Christian radio station recently yanked a programme featuring Driscoll due to Driscoll’s teachings concerning sex. In particular, this 2007 sermon delivered in Edinburgh was considered unacceptable:

During the sermon, which was entitled “Sex, a Study of the Good Bits from Song of Solomon,” Driscoll interpreted Song of Solomon 2:3 as referring to oral sex and then said, “Men, I am glad to report to you that oral sex is biblical…The wife performing oral sex on the husband is biblical. God’s men said, Amen. Ladies, your husbands appreciate oral sex. They do. So, serve them, love them well. It’s biblical. Right here. We have a verse. ‘The fruit of her husband is sweet to her taste and she delights to be beneath him.’”

The transcript of the sermon can be seen here. A similar talk on the same theme - part of a series called “The Peasent Princess” – can be seen here; just after 38:00 Driscoll cites a certain Joseph Dillow (also known as Jody Dillow) as his source for this exegesis. Dillow, an electrical engineer who went on to study at the Dallas Theological Seminary, is the author of Solomon on Sex (sometimes incorrectly cited as Solomon and Sex), which was published by Thomas Nelson in 1977; Dillow saw the passage as referring to an “oral genital caress”. This interpretation is also shared by the Skeptics’ Bible, although there the motive is primarily to annoy Christians.

Certainly, the Song of Solomon is a somewhat anomalous text in the Bible, but such a graphic reading of this largely metaphorical passage is something of a stretch. Commentators have suggested that probably simple kissing is intended, and they point out that there is no discussion of oral sex in comparable Egyptian love poetry. Plus, of course, the overall thrust of the Bible does not appear to favour marital kinkiness of any kind (I can’t imagine Saint Paul being very impressed), which suggests that Driscoll, as a Christian fundamentalist, is looking for a loop-hole for his own purposes.

However, Driscoll pushes the envelope somewhat further – not only has he found permission in the Bible, it appears to be a prescription:

[In recounting the story about the man who started coming to Driscoll’s church because his wife began performing oral sex:]

She [the wife] says, “I’ve never performed oral sex on my husband. I’ve refused to.” I said, “You need to go home and tell your husband that you’ve met Jesus and you’ve been studying the Bible, and that you’re convicted of a terrible sin in your life. And then you need to drop his trousers, and you need to serve your husband. And when he asks why, say, ‘Because I’m a repentant woman. God has changed my heart and I’m supposed to be a biblical wife.’” She says, “Really?” I said, “Yeah. First Peter 3 says if your husband is an unbeliever to serve him with deeds of kindness.” [Laughter from audience] How many men would agree, that is a deed of kindness. He doesn’t want tracts. Those won’t do anything. What we’re talking about here could really help.

Driscoll, it should be recalled, previously used the Ted Haggard male-prostitute scandal as an opportunity to opine that:

It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Driscoll’s sermon was given at the Destiny Church in Edinburgh, which is pastored by a certain Peter Anderson. According to the website of the mother church in Glasgow:

Pastor Andrew Owen describes the church as a contemporary apostolic Christian movement that thinks like social entrepreneurs.

Today, Destiny churches are established throughout Scotland, Germany, India, Ireland and Kenya. These churches are inter-dependant, and work together as a family of churches.

(Hat tip: Jesus’ General)

Ethiopian Ark of the Covenant Not To Be Revealed After All

Following on from my last post, apparently we all missed this report in Adnkronos last week , which includes a clarification from Ethiopian Orthodox patriarch Abuna Pauolos:

Non sono qui per dare delle prove che l’Arca sia in Etiopia, ma sono qui per dire quello che ho visto, quello che so e che posso testimoniare. Non ho detto che l’Arca sarà mostrata al mondo. E’ un mistero, un oggetto di culto.

A Freeper has helpfully provided a translation:

I am not here to give proofs that the Ark is in Ethiopia, but I am here to say what I saw, what I know and I can attest to. I didn’t say that the Ark would be revealed to the world. It is a mystery, an object of veneration.

First the Jim Barfield let down, and now this…

(Hat tip: a comment at Joel’s Trumpet)

WND Arko-mania

With news that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is planning to make public – today! – the hitherto concealed “Ark of the Covenant” the church claims is kept at a church in Aksum, WorldNetDaily eschews scholars on Ethiopian religion and history in favour of some soundbites  from various self-proclaimed “ark-hunters” and fundamentalist evangelists. First up, Bob Cornuke:

Bob Cornuke, biblical investigator, international explorer and best-selling author, has participated in more than 27 expeditions around the world searching for lost locations described in the Bible…He told WND he believes this artifact may be authentic.

…Cornuke said he also met with the president of Ethiopia nearly nine years ago and had a one-on-one conversation with him in his palace. He asked if Ethiopia had the Ark of the Covenant.

According to Cornuke, the president responded: “Yes, we do. I am the president, and I know. It’s not a copy. It’s the real thing.”

That president would have been Negasso Gidada, who is a Protestant.

Cornuke is off to Ethiopia next week. As I blogged here, Cornuke, whose archaeological qualifications come from Louisiana Baptist University, already claims to have found Noah’s Ark in Iran.

A particularly daft story follows, provided by Grant Jeffrey:

He told WND he has spoken extensively with Robert Thompson, former adviser to former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.

Jeffrey said Thompson told him the Ark of the Covenant had been taken to Ethiopia by Menelik, purported son of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. When Menelik became emperor, he claims royal priests entrusted him with the Ark of the Covenant because King Solomon was slipping into apostasy. A replica was then left behind in Israel.

“The Ethiopian royal chronicles suggest that for 3,000 years, they had been guarding the ark, knowing that it had to go back to Israel eventually,” Jeffrey said.

He claims that after the Ethiopian civil war, Israel sent in a group of commandos from the tribe of Levi and the carried the Ark onto a plane and back to Israel in 1991.

“It is being held there secretly, waiting in the eyes of the religious leaders of Israel, for a supernatural signal from God to rebuild the temple,” he said. “They are not going to do it before that. When that happens, they will bring the Ark into that temple.”

This is typical of the way apocalyptic Christian Zionists make Israel into a fantasy land rather than part of the real world. A fuller account of Jeffrey’s story can be seen here. Thompson died in 1997, so we can’t ask him why he chose to share this information with nobody except the author of apocalyptic paperbacks.

Chuck “Peanut Butter” Missler, meanwhile, is hedging his bets:

“What everybody overlooks is that there’s a reason that particular story was cooked up in early times,” he said. “It was to give their kings Solomonic descent. There’s reason why they would try to sell that. But just because the official belief in how it got down there is not biblical, doesn’t mean they don’t have it.”

And Richard Rives adds, referring to the story that a replica Ark was built in Jerusalem after Solomon’s supposed son Menelik took away the original:

“God’s presence was on the mercy seat. That was the throne of God,” he said.

If the account were accurate, Rives said God would have been dwelling on an Ark replica in Jerusalem.

“I just don’t believe they could have persuaded him to sit on a fake Ark of the Covenant,” he said.

Rives should know – as I blogged here, he heads Wyatt Archeological Research Inc, which was founded by the late Robert Wyatt. Wyatt claimed to have glimpsed the Ark in a cave in Jerusalem; he also found Noah’s Ark (presumably a different one from the one in Iran), Noah’s house and grave, pre-flood wood without tree rings, sulphur balls from Sodom and Gomorrrah, and much else – including Jesus’ blood, which contained 23 chromosomes from Mary and one from God.