Dan or Daniela? A Tale from Costa Rica

From an old advert on Facebook, dating from 2008

Investment Opportunity – up to 2000% return in the next 4 years

On September 7, 2007, Hurricane Felix made landfall on the North Atlantic region of Nicaragua. The hurricane’s devastating winds and rain leveled the old-growth tropical forest on a gigantic scale.

Because of the extensive damage, the Nicaraguan government issued emergency contracts for the Timber Recovery Project to private sector companies such as Valcor S.A., which was chosen to head the recovery efforts within a large segment of the disaster area. Valcor is uniquely suited to this task since they own one of the largest sawmill and lumber processing companies in Nicaragua and because they have timber and mining concession agreements in place with all of the municipalities involved, approved by the government.

…Please be aware that there are only a limited number of shares available at the class A level (25% of profits) as we have acquired several large investment companies into the project, totaling $40 million at this point. We have also sold approximately $1 million in individual shares.

Please visit our hurricane relief website at http://www.hurricanefelixhelp.com/photos.html

Dan Chambers
Premier Investment
www.valcorinvestment.com

Chambers made the posting to Facebook in his own name, and Costa Rican contact details are given. Although the advert promises returns over “the next 4 years”, the company has since disappeared and the links are dead.

So, did anyone manage to get rich quick from the scheme? Details are scarce, although some googling suggests not. And according to a news report in El Nuevo Diario dating from August 2010, the director of Valcor – a certain Val Pacheco – appears to have got into some legal difficulties around accusations of money laundering (the report mentions “Velcor”, but other sites show this is a misspelling of “Valcor”).

Of course, none of this is Chambers’ fault – he was just a manager – but I’d have been embarrassed to have been involved in any capacity. Perhaps Chambers had better luck the following summer, when he was advertising as a gold bullion seller on Tradekey.

This is of some interest to me; back in 2009 I received a couple of goading comments from Costa Rica from someone using the name “Daniela Chambers”. Both appeared on posts about Dominic Wightman (who sometimes uses the name “Dominic Whiteman”). In the first post, I explained Wightman’s attempts to manipulate Tim Ireland and me into attacking a person against whom he has a grudge. Here was “Daniela”‘s response:

It looks like you have been played, Richard. I wonder what Whiteman found out about you when he was collaborating with you?

The second post concerned a list of abusive questions that had been sent to Tim Ireland, and which had a Costa Rican phone number appended. I showed how the questions looked very similar to an essay written by Wightman, which Wightman had posted to his own site after Tim had received the questions but before Tim had written about them on his blog. “Daniela” had a theory:

The similarities would be explained by Ireland dropping a key stroke logger onto Wightman’s computer at some point when they were communicating and grabbing a sneak copy of the article, which was presumably sent to Wightman first. Or maybe it is those cheerleaders again messing with your leftie minds ; )

“Daniela” also gave an email address, which was very similar to Dan Chambers’ personal email address (both use only the same part of the surname, followed by the same two initials). A look at Dan Chambers’ Facebook contacts, meanwhile, lists Wightman; Wightman was also advertising on Tradekey as a bullion trader around the same time as Chambers (this was not long after Wightman had declared bankruptcy).

I’ve emailed Dan Chambers to ask if he was “Daniela”, but I have received no reply. Alternative explanations are (a) someone else created the “Daniela Chambers” identity, using Dan Chambers as a model; or (b) there is really a “Daniela Chambers” living in Costa Rica, with a similar email address to that of Dan Chambers, and an independent association with Wightman.

UPDATE: Adrian Morgan has left a comment below, with further information about Wightman’s links to Chambers. Adrian used to be associated with Wightman’s website, but he split from Wightman when he discovered that Wightman was dishonest. Adrian and I probably disagree on some matters of politics, but we both agree that one should either argue openly or agree to disagree. The idea of using sockpuppets or manipulating the internet to disseminate false information would be repellent – both as a matter of ethics and as a matter of personal dignity.

UPDATE 2: Chambers’ involvement with Wightman is also discussed in this new post by Tim Ireland. He quotes an email which Wightman sent to Adrian in September 2009, which includes the following:

I am going to do the following:

…6. Tim Ireland take-down (Sunday – a day before he releases a vicious take-down on me) Author: Dan Chambers, a pal…

Wightman soon after published an attack on Tim, which for some reason took the form of Wightman being interviewed by a fictitious lawyer from Venezuela named Olivia James. As Adrian notes below, the name “oliviaj772” was also used to post videos of Wightman to Youtube; the YouTube channel gives Costa Rica as the location.

Wightman has also responded to the above on his own website:

The little known blogger Richard Bartholomew (Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion) has been at it again – trying to stir up trouble. This time Bartholomew smears a friend of mine who lives in Costa Rica. The bemused friend happened to chat with me over the weekend and asked me who this Bartholomew was. I had to inform him that Bartholomew is a deceitful little left wing blogger who makes John Merrick seem kissable; that Bartholomew is my electronic stalker’s lackey and that he writes a blog about religious nuts but that it is fatally flawed as he is too scared to mention Islamists. “Ah,” replied my friend and so we continued chatting about Tamarindo surf.

David Yerushalmi “Withdraws Libel Threat”

Richard Silverstein writes:

NOTE: Yerushalmi has withdrawn his lawsuit threat in a note he sent to my counsel.

The lawyer David Yerushalmi had threatened to sue Silverstein for libel, writing to his lawyer that:

When he first attacked me personally and stated that I was a fascist, racist, and Kahanist, I ignored [his statements]… Unfortunately, your client has republished the original articles via links in a most recent piece stating that I am a white supremacist. I might still have ignored this except for the fact that it has now concretely and specifically injured me in my legal profession in Arizona. I have now lost an African American client who was prepared to retain my firm but for your clients defamatory publications, because he could not afford to be associated with someone accused of such beliefs even though he knows I do not hold these beliefs. Much of his business is in public relations and this charge by your client was for him too much to sustain.

…The suit will be brought in Arizona.  An interesting and related case is Yetman v. English, 168 Ariz. 71, 811 P.2d 323 (1991).

I certainly understand your client will raise the standard First Amendment defenses: opinion, hyperbole, no actual malice.  If we get past these, your client will have the opportunity to test “truth” as a defense.

I’ve blogged on Yerushalmi previously; his clients include Pamela Geller (who also likes to make legal threats while accusing Muslims of “lawfare”), and in 2008 he was involved with the absurd “Mapping Shariah” project. Yetman v. English refers to case in which an Arizona representative had accused a political opponent of being a “communist” over his approach to a rural zoning change; it’s odd to see Yerushalmi rely on such as a precedent, given that accusations of secret communism are a central strategy of so many of his activist allies.

I’m generally cautious with allegations of racism: too often, such accusations end up getting bogged down in how racism should be defined. Opinion is cheap, and people can make up their own minds over what may have motivated someone to write something or to follow a particular course of action. The accusation was also made against Yerushalmi by Mother Jones.

In his own defence, Silverstein draws attention to one particular passage by Yerushalmi:

…Our constitutional republic was specifically designed to insulate our national leaders from the masses,democracy has seeped up through the cracks and corroded everything we once deemed sacred about our political order. Prior to the Civil War, the electorate, essentially white Christian men, had access to local government. It was here, where men shared an intimacy born of family ties, shared religious beliefs, and common cultural signposts, that representative government was meant to touch our daily lives. With the social and cultural revolution which followed the emancipation, man’s relationship to political order was radically nationalized and democratized.

Raw or radical democracy where all men and all ideas and all cultures are deemed equal and given equal voice. That is of course the agenda of the Left…

Such views appear in a rambling essay called “On Race: A Tentative Discussion”, which used to be on Yerushalmi’s Saneworks site but which has since been reposted elsewhere (without his permission). Some highlights:

…Now, if skin color, disease, body shape and size, athleticism all have a biological basis, why is it that intelligence or predilection to violence might not also have genetic bases. In fact, there is enormous evidence to the contrary. For example, at the extremes, we know that mentally retarded people and geniuses were “born” that way.

…But if standardized testing suggests a racial component to IQ, if the New York City and national murder statistics suggest there is a racial component to murder, why is that necessarily a bad racism? With all of the liberal talk of evolution and biology, why do people find it so difficult to confront the facts that some races perform better in sports, some better in mathematical problem solving, some better in language, some better in Western societies and some better in tribal ones?

…There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote. You might not agree or like the idea but this country’s founders, otherwise held in the highest esteem for their understanding of human nature and its affect on political society, certainly took it seriously.

…The fact that a retarded person can vote [i.e., literacy tests have been outlawed] but a child cannot is not sustainable and eventually the ACLU will successfully challenge this baseless age discrimination. Just like the laws against “consensual” sex with minors, or animals, or polygamy will eventually be challenged and held to be unconstitutional in the same way sodomy has been transformed into a “right,” when it once was an absolute abomination to the vast, vast majority of Americans… When Process and Rights replace the moral compass supplied by this country’s Judeo-Christian foundings, nothing, absolutely nothing can be morally repugnant anymore, at least not in the eyes of the law.

…If, on the other hand, science, meaning liberal scientists with the Elites’ agenda firmly in hand, don’t allow for an inquiry into the differences between peoples, races and sexes, and scientists carefully guard the boundaries that keep science in control, democracy and the Open Society, multiculturalism and the remainder of the trendsetters on the way to an amorphous World State, remain unchallenged.

One wonders what some of Yerushalmi’s clients might make of such “tentative” ruminations, even without whatever label Silverstein or anyone else may have given to them.

CBN: Ivory Coast Curfew Means More Viewers for Pat Robertson

Some good news for Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network:

Ivory Coast: Good News During Civil War
By CBN Ivory Coast

…With strong support from pastors of various denominations in Ivory Coast, CBN began to make preparation for an evangelistic media campaign that would take place during the Christmas holidays. What no one expected though, was that the country would erupt into civil war.

….CBN WorldReach Director Peter Darg writes …”With a complete curfew from sun down to sun up, everybody is trying to race around to get to work, school or shopping and mostly creating massive traffic tie ups. After dark, everyone is at home watching TV, so the blitz (media campaign)timing is perfect in this regard (imagine what the USA TV networks would give to force everyone in the country to be in their homes every night watching the TV or face being shot).”

…CBN is also providing a series of 20 half-hour radio programs for the FM station in Abijan, Radio Frequence Vie. These radio programs are based on Pat Robertson’s best selling book and TV series Answers.

As I’ve blogged previously, Robertson sees the conflict in Ivory Coast in terms of a religious war between Muslim “rebels” and a Christian president: back in January, CBN ran a piece explaining that in the recent election Gbagbo “only lost to the Muslim challenger because of voter fraud” as concocted by “Saudi Arabia” and “Muslims in France”. The piece came with a softball interview with Gbagbo, which was “broadcast on Ivorian National Television”. Robertson’s version of the story has also been picked up by WorldNetDaily, which sees a United Nations conspiracy at work. The view that the west ought to continue to support Gbagbo will doubtless be strengthened by the recent massacre in the town of Duekoue, which appears to have been perpetrated by soldiers loyal to president-elect Alassane Ouattara; however, Gbagbo’s troops are also responsible for large numbers of deaths.

CBN’s support for Gbagbo is also a matter of self-interest:

It all started a little more than a year ago when the First Lady of Ivory Coast visited The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in Virginia Beach, Virginia on a special mission. Mrs. Somone Gbagbo, the wife of Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, wanted CBN to provide Christian TV programs for her country. In return she would guarantee that the programs would air on national television. To respond to the immediate need, episodes of The 700 Club were regularly dubbed into French and shipped for broadcast. The goal, however, was to have an African program that would be tailored for the region with French African hosts. Within a few months, Raymond Kauffee from Cameroon and Macy Domingo from Ivory Coast began hosting Le Club 700 that now airs in French speaking countries throughout the region.

The phrase “the wife” should actually be “a wife” – he has two of them.

(Hat tip: Terry Krepel at Media Matters. Incidentally, Peter Darg previously appeared on this blog in 2006)

Louis Theroux Returns to Westboro

There were few surprises in Louis Theroux: America’s Most Hated Family In Crisis, last night’s follow-up to Theroux’s 2007 documentary on the Westboro Baptist Church. The “crisis” refers to a number of young adult members who have either left or been expelled from the church: Theroux meets a couple of these, including Lauren Drain, who has been disowned by her father Steve Drain. Lauren explains that her father used to be in a rock band and had taught philosophy and western civilization in college before becoming involved with the church; Westboro Baptist is where he’s now “manifesting his ego” and can have “power over his family”. The main point of interest for Theroux was the psychological efforts of the parents in rejecting their children:

My return visit to the Phelps’ had convinced me that they were embarked on an eccentric mission to live life in denial of the most basic human emotions. Stifling their own feelings, they felt entitled, in fact compelled, to trample on those of other people.

Fred Phelps himself appears only briefly, giving a sermon fulminating against Jews (“these modern Jews have the stinking smell of the criminal Barabbas about their person, and they have the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ on their hands.”); seeing Theroux and the camera crew, he mutters to someone, “Those guys are on the loose, sallying forth. You’ve got to get rid of them”.

The main change since 2007 seems to be that the group has become more urgently apocalyptic, believing that Obama is the anti-Christ and that they will soon be forced to leave the USA: when that happens, they will await the end times either in Jerusalem or in “pink caves” in Jordan. And while some members raised in the church are leaving, the group does continue to attract converts: at the back of the church Theroux meets Jack, an earnest Asian-American from San Francisco who is attending worship meetings with a view to eventually being accepted for membership.

One of the Westboro members also reminds us that a few months ago the church had held a Koran-burning; although not mentioned in the programme, this was after Pastor Terry Jones had reneged on his promise to burn the book (in April 2010, Westboro and Jones’s Dove World Outreach Church held a joint protest, although details are no longer on the Dove website). The stunt did not generate a great deal of media publicity, nor appeals from government officials – and there were no related outbursts of violence in Afghanistan. Now, what conclusion might we draw from that…?

Pastor Terry Jones to Join Punk Anti-Mosque Protest

Pastor Terry Jones has forced himself back into the news, with fatal protests in Kandahar following a Koran-burning at his church in Florida. He is also once again drumming up publicity for himself by announcing that he intends to join a protest being organised by another group – a few months ago he did this with three groups based in the UK (the English Defence League, the National Front, and England is Ours), and this time it’s with a group called the “Order of the Dragon”, which is organising a protest in Dearborn. Arab American News notes:

Despite strong opposition, extremist pastor Terry Jones still plans to protest in Dearborn later this month.

Founders of a northern Michigan group named Order of the Dragon, and organizers of the anti-Sharia law protest scheduled for Apr. 22 at the Islamic Center of America say the event is nothing more than a political demonstration.

The group, which has no more than five members according to Fox 2 News, released the following statement by email to The Arab?American News.

“This protest was formed by a few concerned citizens that want to ban ‘foreign law, legal code, or system’ meaning any law, rule, legal code, or system of jurisdiction outside of any state or territory of the United States.’ We are protesting global jihad caused by our Middle East policy, and wish to expose some Israeli/Palestinian lies that we feel need to be approached…to move forward.”

The “Order of the Dragon” (OOTD) has a website here; the protest is also billed as being against the “Palastinian [sic] Wall of Lies”. The site also has a section called “Bands for the Cause”, where we can listen to the song Mosque of Terror by the band “Crude Legacy”, along with items by Chris Christy and Brian Jess. A second website, called the “New Order of the Dragon”, appears to be an older version of the same group; Christy is listed as “treasurer”, and with Frank Fiorello as president; Fiorello also heads the “Crude Legacy” band. According to the site:

One of the Original Founding Members and President of the Dragons. He is a promoter with the DRCP ARMY a Detroit based underground punk/metal movement.

“DRCP Army records” is Crude Legacy’s label.

Further:

The Order Of The Dragon is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that relies on donations to continue its work to help Americans from harming changes that are occuring at an alarming rate, by Secular Proggresive movements and by Facist Islam’s Stealth Jihad. If you have questions before you make a donation, please write or call the number below.

Fiorello has also created a Facebook page to promote the protest, billed as the “OOTD RALLY Anti Sharia & Jihad Protest”. It’s also featured on Jones’ website, along with a letter from Fiorello:

It is necessary that we set very clear lines for Muslims that are here in America . They are welcome to be here. They are welcome to worship. They are welcome to build mosques. But we do expect them to honor and obey our Constitution. If they desire to change our Constitution, in other words to institute Sharia, then these Muslims are no longer welcome in our country.

Now is the time that we make a very, very clear statement to radical Islam.

Morocco and Western Sahara

Writing at Pambazuka News, anthropologist Konstantina Isidoros discusses how stirrings in Morocco may affect Western Sahara:

In cities across Western Sahara such as Dakhla, El Aaiun and Smara, civil society and human rights advocates have long embarked on waves of pro-democracy protests, now seen echoing through the Moroccan population itself.

…Algeria’s wealth and independence on the international scene enables it much room to manoeuvre in responding to its population’s demands. Morocco does not have this luxury. What remains to be seen is just how much longer the monarchy can justify its archaic Western Sahara myth to the international community, the Sahrawi living under a repressive occupation and ultimately to the Moroccan population’s own socio-economic woes.

In a second piece, Isidoros discusses how Morocco frames the conflict:

‘Over the last 35 years, Morocco has built up a sophisticated propaganda machine, and wooed US and French governments [both permanent members of the UN Security Council] to wipe out all criticism of its defiance of international law. To this day, Morocco treats all outspoken challenges with aggressive hysteria. Morocco would never have been able to get away with it without the geopolitical collusion and greed of Spain, the US and France,’ she insists.

…[T]he media in other of the key countries does not cover the conflict at all, or covers it very one-sidedly. ‘France has an emotional colonial history with Morocco,’ Konstantina says. ‘Leading French politicians and elites have homes and vacations in Morocco and Morocco courts France with avaricious charm so that the majority French population receives little media coverage on any non-Moroccan stance. The UK has little history in the region and takes a refrained stance. The British population are mostly unaware of the conflict although parliamentary, NGO and academic circles are outspoken and growing rapidly.’

Morocco’s hard line on the subject can be seen in a particular incident from 2oo6; Freedom House noted soon after:

Le Journal Hebdomadaire, published and edited by journalists Aboubakr Jamai and Ali Amar respectively, suffered such government harassment throughout the year. In February, the weekly ran a small photograph of someone holding a newspaper that had published controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Within days, the magazine’s office was besieged by protesters who were apparently bused in by the government. Meanwhile, pro-government media outlets attacked Le Journal in print and on the airwaves. Later in February, a Rabat court awarded security analyst Claude Moniquet a record 3 million Moroccan dirhams (US$340,000) in a defamation suit he brought against Le Journal. Moniquet’s Brussels-based think tank, the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, had published a report on Western Sahara, and Le Journal’s editors questioned the study’s independence. An appeals court subsequently confirmed the damages sum.

Of course, I wouldn’t want to dispute the validity of Moniquet’s complaint, but a victory in such a context must be of limited value.

Moniquet is of some incidental interest: in 2007 he came to the House of Commons with a chilling warning:

“We have serious signals that something is under preparation in Europe,” Moniquet said, though he did not present any evidence to the meeting. “Iranian intelligence is working extremely hard to prepare its people and to prepare actions.” The center, which he said deals directly with European intelligence agencies, believes Iranian operatives have carried out “reconnaissance of targets in European cities, including nuclear power stations,” said Moniquet. He mentioned no other specific targets. The meeting was organized by Open Europe, a London think-tank, and Conservative lawmaker Patrick Mercer.

Mercer raised the issue in Parliament, citing Moniquet, the next day. However, despite the “serious signals”, the story did not develop further after an initial flurry of reports; this is a familiar pattern with Mercer, who regularly appears in British media warning about terrorism (e.g. herehere, and here).

Moniquet is also a member of the International Counter-Terrorism Officers Association, which provides anti-terror training for American police – it is not clear how actively involved he is, although he includes the association in his email signatures, and the ICTOA was given as his affiliation for a January report in Russian in which he opined on the terrorist attack at Moscow airport. The ICTOA has recently come under critical scrutiny over some of the people it hires as experts terrorism, such as Walid Shoebat.