Wardman Wire Magazine

First of all, let me set the context for this series of posts.

I have covered the rundown of the bookshop chain that used to be known as SPCK over several months. An earlier post covered a story of some leaked correspondence from the time when the management of the bookshop at Durham Cathedral was transferred from the Society of Saint Stephen the Great (SSGCT) to the newly created company “Durham Cathedral Shop Management Limited” (DCSML), which showed a brutal approach to the management of unpaid suppliers to the previous management company SSGCT.

This article is about a debt of almost £100,000 ($165,000+) built up over a mere three month period owed to the new company DCSHL by SSGCT after the new company took over on March 11th 2008, and before J Mark Brewer attempted to put SSGCT into Bankruptcy in Texas on 19 June 2008 (that is the date when the “Statement of Financial Affairs” was filed).

I also take a detailed look at a series of payments comprising well over half a million dollars taken out of the SSGCT organisation during a period of 12 months and paid to J Mark Brewer’s legal firm or to him personally, or to the “Orthodox Christian Mission Fund” of which he is listed as the Trustee.

I need to attach a strong note here that the SPCK mission society who used to be associated with the bookshop chain which includes the Durham Cathedral Bookshop is no longer involved in any way, and that Durham Cathedral are the landlord and not responsible for the management of the Durham Cathedral Bookshop. Nothing in this article reflects on either Durham Cathedral or SPCK.

I should also say that there are a lot of numbers in this post, and I will be pleased to correct any mistakes.

Via Damian Thompson’s Holy Smoke blog, a report of a plan by Scientologists to swoop on Mumbai with their “educational booklets”, as previously happened after the New York World Trade Centre attacks after 9/11, in London after the Bus and Underground Bombs on 7/7 in 2005, at Virginia Tech after the shootings and on other occasions.

He has confirmed the existence of a plan to despatch of Scientology Booklets with the headquarters of ABLE UK. ABLE UK is a Scientology front organisation, Association for Better Living and Education:

I can confirm that. I’ve just rung ABLE UK at Saint Hill Manor, the Scientology HQ, to be told that Hubbard booklets are being rushed out “in order to pour oil on troubled water”. I think I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

There is a very important article by Andy Worthington over at Liberal Conspiracy about an announcement by Baroness Scotland of an investigation into activities at Guantanamo:

Thursday’s extraordinary announcement that the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, has been asked by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to investigate possible “criminal wrongdoing” by MI5 and the CIA in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is the latest, and perhaps most significant example of the use of torture coming back to haunt the torturers.

Mr. Mohamed’s lawyers have spent over three years attempting to secure information proving that their client, seized in Pakistan in April 2002, was rendered by the CIA to 18 months of torture in Morocco, and was then transferred to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, before arriving in Guantánamo in September 2004.

A must read.

There was a short item on the Radio 4 Today Programme this morning about sexual abuse in Mosques. Here is the audio snippet (6 minutes). Click through on the title if you cannot see the Audio Player.

There has been some work in this area, notably by the UK Muslim Parliament (which is a totally reformed organisation from the one that was camapigning under the leadership of Dr Kalim Siddiqui for a “separate Islamic legal space” back in the 1990s). It is now lead by Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui (no relation), and takes a co-operative rather than confrontational approach.

They were working on a project looking at Child Protection in Faith Based Environments (PDF) more than a year ago, which is worth a look.

Andrew Rawnsley on Politics Home this morning following a question to their “Expert Panel 100″ panel:

Jacqui Smith is being cast as Big Brother - though perhaps that should be Big Mother - over plans to further extend the amount of information on citizens held by the state. The terrorism watchdog is one of those concerned with the idea of a database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit.

The Home Secretary will go ahead regardless of strong opposition.

A big majority (seventy three per cent) of the politically balanced panel think that Ministers intend to proceed anyway. Only a small minority of the panel (seven per cent) think that there will not be strong opposition to the database scheme.

About a quarter of the panel (twenty six per cent) reckon the Government will drop the plan.

I haven’t commented on this one so far, but it’s been all over everywhere.

The Rev Peter Mullen, of St Michael’s Cornhill (this is now deleted from his site, but Ruth Gledhill quoted him in an aticle):

Mr Mullen, 66, wrote on his blog: ‘It is time that religious believers began to recommend… discouragements of homosexual practices after the style of warnings on cigarette packets.Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS.’

And again:

In another post he wrote an ode to the blessing of two gay priests, celebrated by the Rev Martin Dudley at St Bartholomew the Great, also in the City. Bishop Chartres has launched an investigation into that service after traditionalists complained that it breached church guidelines that the church should not bless civil partnerships.

Simon Barrow is involved in the new Accord coalition, aiming at Reform of Faith Schools in the UK. Here he explains why, and what changes he would like to see made.

At the end of an interview about the work of Ekklesia last year, I was asked a pertinent personal question. “Is your own major professional concern in all this journalistic, campaigning or academic?” It wasn’t something that came out in the final product, because I think I just said “a bit of each”. But it made me reflect more on how those three approaches may complement or contradict one another.

Put positively, it seems to me that good journalism is about condensing fact and opinion for rapid consumption without confusing the two; that good campaigning is about effective advocacy which builds bridges for change; and that good academic work is about deepening human enquiry so that the difference between a matter of thought and an arcane point of scholarship becomes clearer.

The problem with campaigning is that there are enormous temptations to simplify, exaggerate and polarise in order to get a point across or build a support base sufficiently indignant to apply political pressure. This is not helped by the media naturally preferring ‘either-or’ narratives to ones marked by the kind of complexity, plurality and ambiguity which are the features of actual life… but which require a bit more unravelling than 2 minutes, a sound bite or 500 words will allow. Yet these are the currency of modern communication, along with a blogsophere that can dish out enlightenment and bile, discussion and demonisation in equal measures (with a far greater preponderance of the latter, the observant cynic might suggest).