Staines Massive

News from UK political blog Bloggerheads, where Tim Ireland has received a legal letter from a lawyer acting on behalf of Paul Staines, the right-”libertarian” political blogger (“Guido Fawkes”) who popped up on BBC Newsnight a few nights ago. Ireland has accused Staines of hotlinking an image onto his website in infringement of Channel 4 [...]

Latvia-Based Anti-Gay Preacher at Atlanta Conference

Part of international evangelism conference
OneNewsNow reports on an evangelism conference in Atlanta:
The three-day conference — called “Synergize” — begins today in an Atlanta, Georgia, church. Pastor Sunday Adelaja, founder of God’s Embassy Church in Kiev, Europe’s largest church, organized the event. Speakers include actor Ben Stein, Chick-fil-A founder Truett Cathy, and Pat Williams, senior vice president of the [...]

Clinton for Moon

More at my Ambassadors for Moon blog.

Moldovan President Gets Orthodox Christian Award

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II has doled out another award to a regional leader with a dodgy reputation; the Moscow Times reports:
President Vladimir Putin met with Moldovan counterpart Vladimir Voronin in the Kremlin on Tuesday to discuss trade and possibly a solution for the issue of Transdnestr.
…On Monday, Voronin, the head of Moldova’s Communist Party, [...]

It’s That Moon Again

A bit of an experiment: I’ve decided to launch a spin-off blog devoted to the Universal Peace Federation and the many prominent ”Ambassadors for Peace” who are now associated with the organisation, which was founded by Rev Moon in 2005. The UPF claims to have played a significant role in development and conflict resolution in numerous [...]

Report: Canadian UPF Given MLK Award by US Consul General

Strange (and slightly confusing) news from the Canadian Gazette (emphasis added):
Emmett (Pops) Johns, the Roman Catholic priest who ministers to Montreal street kids, Gemma Raeburn-Baynes, a veteran black community activist, and a former child soldier from Sierra Leone, Alusine Bah, are this year’s local recipients of the Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award.
The honour is [...]

Death Sentence for Afghan Journalist for “Blasphemy”

Follows 2003 and 2005 cases
Index on Censorship has the story of Sayed Parvez Kambakhsh, the young Afghan journalist who has been sentenced to death for supposedly downloading and distributing an Iranian article (unidentified) deemed to be blasphemous:
Deeply conservative Afghan clerics, most of whom have never used a computer or the Internet, believe Kambakhsh himself wrote the [...]

Possible Court Case over Orkney Satanic Panic

Staying with Private Eye, news (p. 29) of a possible court action emerging out of the 1991 Orkney “Satanic Panic” that led to nine children being taken into care by social workers and a number of adults – including the local church minister – accused of ritual abuse. The case is to be brought by [...]

Eye Suggests Murdoch Motive for Ban on Cruise Book

The latest Private Eye magazine (1202, p. 26) has some extra context as to why Andrew Morton’s new biography of Tom Cruise is unavailable from Angus & Robertson, the Australian bookshop chain. The obvious reason is the fear of a libel action (as I blogged here), but the Eye also notes that Angus & Robertson [...]

Russian Foreign Minister Links Russian Diplomacy to Orthodox Church

An interesting piece from Interfax Religion:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov believes the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian diplomacy have been traditionally united with common purposes.
‘Work of Russian diplomats has been consonant with the aspirations of the Russian Orthodox Church for centuries,’ Lavrov said on Monday evening in the Church Councils hall of Moscow’s Christ the [...]