Bartholomew's Notes

I’ve shifted my occasional “spin-off” blog on Rev Moon and the Universal Peace Federation over to WordPress from Blogger – see the link at the top of the page or click here.

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A thudding rant:

Barack Hussein Obama and his program are contrary to American history and our national destiny. He needs to straighten himself out and speak the truth to the American people. Growing up between Islamic teachings and Socialist theories apparently have confused his concepts…I would classify him as a nonbeliever who pretends to be a Christian, similar to the National Socialist “German Christians” who used the Christian language to promote their Nazi ideology.

Yes, it’s Hilmar von Campe, aged American-German businessman who was born in 1925 and was a member of both the Hitler Youth and then the German army. Presenting himself as a repentant ex-Nazi who realized  – after turning evangelical – that he had been “brainwashed”, von Campe claims now to have a special insight into “Nazi ideology” and its manifestation in just about every political movement or individual he happens to dislike. The ACLU? ” I think the ACLU is distributing Nazi philosophy.” Elian Gonzalez? “The Miami raid reminds me of the time when the discrimination of the Jews started in Nazi Germany”. The ill-considered disruption of a minuteman lecture at Columbia university? “Hitler had storm troopers who would shut up the opposition. And, that is what these people were trying to do, the same thing.” Muslims? Take a guess…

On the other hand, being a ruthless military dictator who liquidated opponents is not necessarily a bad thing:

General Augusto Pinochet, who prevented the totalitarian take-over of Chile by the Allende/Castro gang and their armed thugs, transformed his country into an envied show-case for the whole of Latin America and returned Chile to democracy has been for decades a main target…of persecution.

Another character to get the von Campe seal of approval is the late South African columnist Aida Parker, whom he describes as his “dear and couragious friend”. It should be noted that Parker for many years ran a notorious newsletter which shored up support for the apartheid regime on supposed “anti-Communist” grounds.

Von Campe also dislikes bankers, and his conspiracy-mongering here rivals John Hagee:

Could there be another Alger Hisses at work today in other sections of the policy making establishment, f.i. in the financial system? What about Alan Greenspan and his banker crowd. A mole not necessarily needs to be a socialist. Greed and money can be as devastating an ideology if it gets hold of mind and soul of a person.

…Since the last president and secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Michael Gorbachev, pretending to be a newly born Christian, operates from government property in the United States, it seems to indicate that greedy capitalists and hard core communists work together to destroy freedom and the only nation which can thwart that purpose: the United States of America.

(Actually, that last article, from 2004, does get some points for pointing out that mortgage-lending was out of control and likely to lead to unhappy consequences)

Von Campe is regarded in conservative circles (including churches) as a “renowned intellectual”, and his website boasts that he is included in the 1992 edition of a book called The International Who’s Who of Intellectuals – doubtless a sure sign of something. At least one of his books is published by Five Continents, which is the name of his Colorado-based business.

Von Campe also claims to be an expert on the Middle East, and he recently teamed up with Walid Shoebat and Top Executive Media for publishing and speaking purposes. Although von Campe is a Christian Zionist, it is unknown whether he shares Shoebat’s views on Biblical scholarship.

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From OneNewsNow:

Brigitte Gabriel, founder of Act for America, says the [New Yorker] cover is actually an accurate portrayal of how Obama is viewed in the Muslim world. “The Muslim world does look at Obama as a Muslim,” she contends.

As for the picture of Osama bin Laden on the wall, she continues, Obama has been sponsored by al Qaida. “Al Qaida wants Obama to be president. The terrorist organizations around the world want Obama to be president,” Gabriel notes.

Gabriel also contends that in the Muslim realm Obama is portrayed as someone who has no loyalty to the U.S., and someone who will defend the right to burn the American flag.

Who exactly these Muslims are who see “Obama as a Muslim” is not explained.

Gabriel was repudiated by the United Jewish Communities back in February.

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The Anti-Christ of Christianity is the Mahdi of Islam? Ever thought about it?…I’ve read Joel’s book, “Ant-Christ” and it is a must have.

See here.

Richardson claims to have sold ten thousand copies of Antichrist: Islam’s Awaited Messiah (endorsed by Robert Spencer), and his associate Walid Shoebat has spread the same idea around American churches in presentations and now in a new publication co-authored with Richardson, God’s War on Terror. As I’ve blogged at more length than deserved (here, here, and here), part of their thesis is the claim that the Greek letters for “666” in the Bible are actually the Arabic for “In the name of Allah”. To reach this conclusion, they point to the Codex Vaticanus manuscript of the Bible, which was written in th Fourth Century. Unfortunately for them, they failed to understand that the original Codex does not contain the Book of Revelation; it was added centuries later using a different script which didn’t exist in the Fourth Century, and the nineteenth-century facsimile edition they consulted replaced this with a typeset version (there are also other objections, but this one highlights their incompetence the most dramatically).

The idea of a Muslim Antichrist is just the latest attempt to spin an American conflict into a divine and apocalpytic battle; Robert Fuller has chronicled some previous identifications in his book Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession. The blurb provides a good summary:

He shows how the colonists saw Antichrist personified in everyone from native Americans to the Church of England. He looks at the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century, showing how such prominent Americans as Yale president Timothy Dwight saw the work of the Antichrist in phenomena ranging from the French Revolution to Masonry. In the twentieth century, Fuller finds a startling array of hate-mongers, such as the Ku Klux Klan, who drew on apocalyptic imagery in their attacks on Jews, Catholics, blacks, socialists, and others. Finally, he considers contemporary fundamentalist writers such as Hal Lindsey and a host of others who have found Antichrist in the sinister guise of the European Economic Community, feminism, and even supermarket barcodes and fibre optics.

Richardson’s book is just the latest in a very long line.

2006

1991

1988

1974

etc, etc…

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A certain Tom Kovach makes a bid to outdo Walid Shoebat with the most absurd anti-Muslim conspiracy:

Only an all-powerful God could have arranged earthquakes to appear on a map in the shape of an upside-down-and-backwards Islamic crescent. But, wait, there’s more. Islamic flags actually contain two celestial features: a crescent moon and a star. So, where is the star? Remember the mention of the idol worship at the Bohemian Grove?

The author is a “former USAF Blue Beret…an inventor, a horse wrangler, a certified paralegal, and a network talk-radio host.” He has also written a book, entitled Slingshot:

 “This book should be required reading for every American, age 16 and older….” — Charles Jones III (Brigadier General, USAF, Retired; chairman, National Veterans Coalition) “If you want to straighten out America, think of it as a compass.” — Jack Cashill, Ph.D. (author, columnist, documentary producer) “… this guy is like Charlie Daniels with a pen instead of a fiddle.” — Mark Rose (columnist and blogger)

(via Sadly No!)

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Bill Weinberg at World War 4 Report notes a mind-numbing press release from “FIST” (“Fight Imperialism-Stand Together”), a youth-group for the US-based “Workers World Party” (sic – I suppose apostrophes must be bourgeois and reactionary):

A protest of Washington’s anti-China policies is planned for July 17 when the Dalai Lama will be speaking at Radio City Music Hall here…The twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo, Tibet’s only living female Buddha, a critic of the Dalai Lama and vice-chairwoman of Tibet’s regional government, says that “Old Tibet was dark and cruel, the serfs lived worse than horses and cattle.” (Reuters)

Bill adds:

If you look up the April 30 Reuters story (which FIST fails to either date or link to), you will find that it cites China’s official Xinhua agency—and that the twelfth Samding Dorje Phagmo is a vice-chair of the Beijing-compliant Tibetan Autonomous Regional People’s Congress!…We’ve already noted some of the surreal politics of the officially atheist Chinese state’s game of divide-and-rule with Tibet’s Buddhists. It is perversely amusing to see FIST (the latest front group for the retro-Stalinist Workers World Party) drawn into the game…

I blogged previously on state-approved Buddhist figures in Tibet here.

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I’m a few days late with this one, from the Daily Express‘s “Religious Affairs Staff” (cough, cough):

THE Archbishop of Canterbury was under fire last night after declaring that Christian doctrine is offensive to Muslims.

Tory MP Philip Davies said: “The archbishop has lost the plot. He is supposed to be leading the Church, not apologising for it. What kind of leadership is this?   “People are sick to death of this handwringing about things from long ago. Dr Williams should be proud of his Christian beliefs.”

I blogged on this gross distortion of Williams’ letter to Muslims at the time, although I wasn’t then aware of Davies’ considered theological contribution.

Davies is a long-time rent-a-quote for right-wing tabloids; as Peter Oborne noted earlier this month:

On the morning of 7 October 2006 The Sun newspaper splashed a dramatic story across its front page. The story – billed as exclusive – concerned a callous and cynical crime committed by Muslims. A team of Sun reporters described in graphic detail how what the paper labelled a “Muslim hate mob” had vandalised a house near Windsor. The Sun revealed that “vile yobs hurled bricks through windows and daubed obscenities. A message on the drive spelled out in 4ft-letters: ‘Fuck off ‘.”

One Tory MP, Philip Davies, was quoted venting outrage at this act of vandalism. “If there’s anybody who should fuck off,” Davies was quoted as saying, “it’sthe Muslims who are doing this kind of thing. Police should pull out the stops to track down these vile thugs”…But there was one very big problem with The Sun story. There was no Muslim involvement of any kind.

But it’s not just Islam on which Davies sounds off: a few weeks ago he was quoted in the Mail calling for a company which offers advice on benefit claims to “be prosecuted for aiding and abetting benefit fraud”; interestingly, the article has since been taken down.

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One of the websites I have come across while researching Walid Shoebat is this one, which puts forward a conspiracy theory that Shoebat and his handler Keith Davies may in fact be the same person. Two pictures are provided, showing that the men are of a similar build, and have similar tastes in hairstyles, facial hair, and clothing:

Good fun, but the idea that one of them is other in disguise was always far-fetched, and can be put to bed with this picture:

Lance Silver, on the left, founded the “Forum for Middle East Understanding”, which Shoebat claims was set up as a non-profit for donations to the Walid Shoebat Foundation (although curiously he mistakenly calls this the “Foundation for Middle East Understanding”). The FFMU is run from the same address in Philadelphia as Silver’s real estate business, and its website appears to be defunct. Some of Silver’s thoughts on the Arab-Israeli conflict (and, strangely, his own agreement with those thoughts) can be seen here, and he also sits on the board of the Philadelphia-based “Interfaith Taskforce for America and Israel” (ITAI). This organisation does not appear to have a website, and it holds events with thuddingly predictable titles such as “The Jihadist Islamic Threat to the Judeo-Christian Way of Life” (Shoebat was involved with that one; this notice – which spells him as “Shubat” – claims he is a “professor”!). The director of ITAI is a certain Joseph Puder, and a conservative Episcopal priest named Peter T. Manzo is also involved. Whether they share Shoebat’s view that the Book of Revelation refers to Islam is not known.

Puder and Silver are also on the board of the America-Kurdistan Friendship League (AKLF), alongside the likes of billionaire conservative Christian Foster Friess and none other than the famous “Indiana Jones of the Right”, Jack Wheeler, who (among much else) back in the 1980s helped Jack Abramoff organise a conference in Angola for Nicaraguan Contras, Afghanistan Mujahideen and South African Security police (see my blog entries here and here for further details).

Davies, meanwhile, left a comment on this blog just a few days ago. He is of the view that

Obviously Mr. Shoebat is such a threat to your liberal diseased minds that you need to smear him and call him names…

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Just in time for the Christians United for Israel “Washington-Israel Summit”, Jews on First has a produced a video (narrated by Ed Asner) highlighting and debunking the farrago of nonsense that makes up John Hagee’s teachings. This is a shortened version:

Meanwhile, Frederick Clarkson survey’s Hagee’s woes – and his attempts to re-position himself in the wake of media scrutiny and his repudiation by John McCain – here.

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The New York Jewish Week has a report on the financial scandals currently enveloping Ehud Olmert, and noting the significant discrepancy in the amount of money which US evangelist Mike Evans is now claiming that he raised for for Olmert’s New Jerusalem Foundation in 2002, when the two of them travelled around evangelical churches in the American South:

In Irving, a suburb of Dallas, The Jerusalem Post reported, Rev. Evans exulted that the evening raised some $400,000. The Dallas Jewish Week, citing Rev. Evans and Raviv, reported a take of at least $326,000. Anyone donating $350 or more received a copy of Rev. Evans’ book, “Jerusalem Betrayed,” the Dallas weekly noted. In it, Rev. Evans predicts an imminent End Time that will see a war in Israel so terrible that blood “will flow down the Jordan River Valley, down the length of the Dead Sea, and thence . . . the entire length of the Negev to Eilat.”

Today, Rev. Evans claims to have raised only $65,000 for the foundation in 2002, notwithstanding his statements to the press at the time. In a brief e-mail exchange via his secretary, Rev. Evans ignored a question asking if he received a share of the money raised for his work on the tour and, if so, how much. He adamantly denied that contributions were collected in cash.

But the senior staff member of Mount Paran Church North wrote in an e-mail to The Jewish Week: “Mike Evans cannot support his claims as regarding checks only at this venue, nor his total [$65,000] estimate for the tour — unless he received nothing at the other locations, which is very, very doubtful!”

I noticed this discrepancy here.

The money was raised on behalf of Israeli survivors of terror attacks, but apparently far less has been spent than was raised. According to the current director of the Foundation, this is because all needs have been met already. The Jewish Week acidly comments on this:

That might be news to Israeli victims in need of long-term counseling for post-traumatic stress, amputees with ongoing medical needs or even recent victims of rocket attacks in Sderot, near the Gaza border.

Evans has of recent months become a bitter critic of Olmert, and he has pledged to “do everything in my power” to wreck the Annapolis peace-process. Perhaps his prayers in this regard will be answered, but not in quite the way he had hoped.

Evans was profiled by Bill Berkowitz for Talk to Action a year ago; like John Hagee, he is a prominent advocate of attacking Iran. In the early days of this blog I noted his suggestion that Franklin D. Roosevelt had been struck dead by God for failing to support Zionism. The Jewish Week adds the incidental detail that

Rev. Evans…had been strongly criticized for setting up a “Holocaust museum” that purported to give visitors the experience of being “herded into a boxcar [and] shocked beyond your wildest imagination as you find yourself right in the middle of a German concentration camp.” The enterprise included appeals for financial support to proselytize Israeli Jews or, as Evans’ fundraising literature puts it, “to share the message of God’s love with every Jewish home in the entire nation of Israel.”

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