Bartholomew's Notes

Back in August, I noted opposition to a visit to Britain by controversial faith healer Todd Bentley. Malcolm Wicks, MP for Croydon, called for Bentley to be banned from entering the country, and this was eventually the Home Secretary’s decision.

Wicks was at the time already ill with cancer, and he died aged 65 a few weeks later, on 29 September.

For Bentley’s segment of neo-Pentecostalism, in which charismatic leaders claim to have been given special authority by God, the death is of a course a supernatural confirmation of Bentley’s spiritual anointing. Rick Joyner concurs (transcript via Apprising Ministries):

Bentley:… September 29th, I was preaching in Ohio. And just before midnight, I got a report that the man that led the ban and the campaign against us in England died suddenly of cancer; on September 29th.

Joyner: Remember the Lord said, “Mark your calendar.” Now this is an important revelation.

Bentley: And I almost—even just sharing the story with trepidation—I-I-I, started weeping. And I thought, “Lord, this man had been battling with stage 4 cancer. And led the campaign. And all the news reports were ‘faith kicking evangelist that cures cancer.’ And it was all against, whether there’s been anybody who has really been healed of cancer.” And when the Lord gave me the dream I had no idea what was coming because the only promise that I received was, in the ninth month, September; 2-9. And I kept thinking about the Scripture Haggai 2:9. And it was in the ninth month that God gave the promise that “the greater glory—the glory of the latter house shall be greater than the former house.” And all I know is God saying, “staring September 29th there’s something of the realm of My glory, My presence and power that’s going to show up and all things are going to become new and the church is going to be able two years from now look back and mark that from that day there was a clear release of God’s presence and power.”…

Joyner: [clears throat] It said, “Mark your calendar.” Now, I think this represents the major opposition. This was the biggest opposition I’ve seen—a whole country banned somebody—a preacher of the gospel. Now, look at some of the crazy people that get in that country. Terrorists, and I mean—but this—mark this day. God is removing opposition from His people. He is going to take the opposition out of the way. And listen, we need to let the pure and holy fear of the Lord come upon us too. I tell you, it is going to be extremely costly to get in God’s way; for what He’s about to do. We need to take this with the utmost seriousness. And, we don’t want anybody dying. We don’t want Ananias’ and Sapphiras. This is serious business.

Commentary on that is probably superfluous.

However, it’s perhaps worth noting that while Bentley’s position within neo-Pentecostalism is much diminished since his sexual indiscretions came to light in 2008, Joyner is more of an “A-lister”, with particularly close links to the likes of Jim Bakker, Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, and Alan Keyes.

In 2011, Joyner warned that the Fukushima disaster presaged the economic destruction of the USA and an earthquake which would very soon devastate the west coast of the USA. A rather stranger boast is his claim to have been shown Hitler’s secret burial place.

UPDATE: Rick Hiebert took a look at Todd Bentley’s Twitter stream from 29 September, which was when Bentley supposedly received his highly-significant message from God:

I’ve had a look at all his “tweets” from Sept. 29 onwards to when I am posting and I haven’t spotted any mention of his dream, or of the passing of Malcolm Wicks and how sorry he may be about that.

There are tweets about what he eats, where he is going on his travels, his new digital book and such. He tweets about other dreams that he has had, so it can’t be that he doesn’t mention such things on his Twitter feed.

One may draw a fairly obvious inference from that.

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From the Observer:

In September, Polish free press campaigners produced a statement that they said was from [UKIP leader Nigel] Farage in support of Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Polish priest and founder of Radio Maryja and its associated outlets, whose stations stand accused of pumping out strongly antisemitic and homophobic material. Last year Rydzyk greeted the arrival of the first gay Polish MP with the words, “the sodomites are coming; it is a really grave matter”. The statement reported as having been from Farage expressed the Ukip leader’s “wholehearted support” and “encouragement” for the priest’s media outlets, which it said were involved in “a battle to preserve freedom and democracy in Poland”.

Last night a Ukip spokesman said that, although it accepted the statement had been circulated, Farage had not “written or signed” it and was unaware that it ever existed…

The letter can be seen here, and concerns a TV station, TV Trwam. It includes the following:

I wish to protest strongly, concerning the Polish Government’s discriminatory and repressive treatment of the television-company, TV Trwam, and to express my wholehearted support for Fr Tadeusz Rydzyk and his fight for media-freedom in Poland.

…The Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group has always, and consistently, been a strong advocate of freedom of speech and of media-freedom. 

…I appeal to all other political groups in the European Parliament to co-sign the present letter and to join me in requiring the Polish government to restore the freedom of the media and stop discriminating against the Catholic media in Poland.  Whether one agrees or not with the views of Fr Rydzyk and Catholic TV Trwam, the current situation of the media in Poland undoubtedly fails to meet recognised, democratic standards and should be a matter of concern for all of us.

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Farage

The letter complains in particular of “the decision to exclude TV Trwam from the Polish Broadcasting Council”, which means that the station is also excluded from the country’s digital platform. The issue has been raised in the European Parliament, and a Polish-based blogger came across a protest in support of the station just today. According to an April report from the Polish Voice, TV Trwam has been excluded from the council over “lack of transparency in its funding”; supporters, however, claim that this amounts to suppression of religion and an attack on democracy.

The station’s complaint also has the support of the Polish Episcopate, although in 2006 and 2007 Radio Maryja was a cause of concern due to Fr Rydzyk’s influence. The Guardian reported in 2006:

As Pope Benedict prepared to pay his first visit to Poland last month, the papal representative in Warsaw called on the Polish episcopate to deal with the “nagging issue of Radio Maryja”.

Among those who accused the station of anti-Semitism and xenophobia in 2006 was Marek Edelman, is the last surviving commander from the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The following year, the Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, called for a change of management at Radio Mayja and warned that the church risked becoming identified with the station. One media report  of the speech also noted remarks that were attributed to Rydzyk earlier in the year:

Rydzyk, in his alleged remarks, criticized President Kaczynski for bowing to pressure to compensate people – some of them Jews – for property nationalized by the postwar communist government, and for donating land for a future Jewish museum when Kaczynski was Warsaw’s mayor.

“You know that it’s about Poland giving $65 billion dollars to the Jews,” Rydzyk purportedly said in a recording that surfaced this summer.

“They will come to you and say: give me your coat. Take off your pants. Give me your shoes.”

However, the station does not object to all Jews, and in 2005 the self-described ex-gay “conversion therapist” Richard Cohen appeared on the station as part of a visit to the country from the USA. According to a report by Tomek Kitlinski and Pawel Leszkowicz from the time:

The Polish priest who hosted the program condemned “easy and cheap toleration, which is in fact a way of death.” Cohen accused gays of a world conspiracy, likened it to Communism, and exhorted: “I challenge you, Poland, to be a world leader in solving homosexuality!”

On Radio Maryja, Richard Cohen asked a rhetorical question: “One is not born homosexual-who would like to be born a leper in the society?” Gays, according to him, can renounce their unfortunate attraction, and only then do they become fully human… Poland’s most influential mass circulation newspaper, Gazeta Ryborcza, posted the Catholic Press Agency story on Cohen’s visit, without commentary: “Richard Cohen himself experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation.The decisive moment was. as he indicated, his meeting of Christ. Cohen who had professed Judaism became a Christian.”

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UPDATE: The EDL denies that the Tweet was genuine, and state that they are “in contact with Twitter”

UPDATE 2: The source of the screenshot has posted a video – see here. The video shows a computer desktop, on which the relevant Twitter page is shown to be open in the Opera browser . He uses the cursor to highlight the text, to click “Reply to Tweet”, and to open the same page on another tab, bringing up a “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” message. The url for the missing Tweet is shown as being https://twitter.com/Official_EDL/status/241922092158143412. The time on his desktop starts at 19.58, which is 22 hours after the time on the the alleged Tweet.

UPDATE 3: The EDL Twitter feed continues to deny the accusation, promising that “we will have the proof soon”, and warning that police will become involved unless the source admits to faking the Tweet. Also, another person has made a video showing that it is possible doctor the text within a browser (and, it appears, the url, although this is less clearly demonstrated).

UPDATE 4: This site, belonging to Tom Royal, explains that Twitter urls are generated from their timestamps by a piece of software called Snowflake, and that this software can thus be used to “decode” urls in order to determine when a Tweet was made. Royal found that url in the video relates to a timestamp from September. Jamie Bartlett has further information to show that the Tweet cannot be genuine.

UPDATE 5: The source of the alleged (and now thoroughly debunked) screenshot is now “account suspended” on Twitter.

***

A number of anti-English Defence League Twitter feeds are currently publicising a screenshot which purports to show the official EDL Twitter feed (@official_edl) celebrating the the latest school massacre in the USA:

If those kids were children to filthy leftists, Adam Lanza did the right thing This world is being destroyed by leftists #Newtown #EDL #NFSE

The screenshot shows that the Tweet is timestamped 10:11pm, presumably GMT. It does not appear in the @official_edl Twitter feed, which has no Tweets between 10:04pm and 10:05am.

The question, of course, is whether the Tweet was genuine but quickly removed, or whether it is a fake created for propaganda reasons. Nobody posted the Tweet’s url, there is no record of it on Google or Yahoo, nobody appears to have replied to it, and nobody seems to have downloaded a copy of the page.

As far as I can tell, the only person who claims to have seen it first hand is a certain JasonWillman3, who posted the screenshot at 12:49am. He describes himself being as a “newbie” (“I’m new to this Twitter thing so bear with me GUYS!”); this scoop was in fact his first ever Tweet, but he knew enough about Twitter to draw it to the attention of a couple of anti-EDL feeds. A few minutes later, he explained that he had come across the Tweet while “casually scrolling through #Newtown feed”. His follow list, which is currently quite short, suggests a primary interest in the EDL, with anti-EDL Twitter feeds as the first feeds he chose to follow.

However, there does seem to be more than one screenshot doing the rounds: JasonWillman3’s version shows some of the official_edl background wallpaper; another version (provenance unknown, but first appearance seems to be 6.56am) has just the @official_edl heading and the text, but does appear slightly crisper – this perhaps suggests that they are two independent images, although I’m reluctant pronounce on technical matters (and it’s possible for more than one hoax image to exist). In both images, the “Follow” button has not been clicked.

Without better documentation, I’m inclined towards scepticism.

UPDATE (posted before UPDATE 2 above): As now noted above, the EDL has stated that they did not make the Tweet, and that they are in contact with Twitter about it. If the Tweet is indeed a hoax, it seems to me most likely that it was created by someone using a different account (probably an account with no followers and in “Protected” mode) and then deleting the evidence very quickly. If so, Twitter should have a record it.

Whatever the truth turns out to be, it’s a foul thing to have written given the tragedy in Newtown, and likely to be an act of criminal malicious communication under British law. And if the author turns out to be a faker, a defence of “I didn’t mean it myself, I was just trying to discredit the EDL” ought to cut no ice.

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From the Telegraph:

Hotel owners around the pyramid-shaped Mount Rtanj, in the east of [Serbia] , say that bookings are flooding in, with believers in the [Mayan Calendar] prophecy hoping that its purported mysterious powers will save them from the apocalypse.

Adherents of the end-of-the-world scenario think the 5,100ft-high mountain, part of the Carpathian range, conceals a pyramidal building inside, left behind by alien visitors thousands of years ago.

Arthur C Clarke, the British science fiction writer, reportedly identified the peak as a place of “special energy” and called it “the navel of the world”.

This website, entitled Duh Rtnja, lays out the theory of Mt Rtanj’s special significance, and promises “galakti?ki kontakt” on 21 December – inevitably, the site also comes with a collection photos overlaid with all kinds of weird and rambling measurements and arrows. There is also a collection of YouTube videos promoting the theory, featuring interviewees that include persons named Goran Marjanovic and Spasoje Vlajic. There is an associated Facebook page here. An aptly named “Milenium grup” apparently runs a hostel at the site; they have a 99-year lease, so perhaps we don’t need to worry too much about the next ten days.

It’s not clear from where the strange quotes attributed to Arthur C. Clarke have come; out of context, it is impossible to judge what they even mean, let alone assess any kind of argument. My instinct, though, is that they’re false. The notion of an ancient alien object on the earth resonates with the plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and its short story predecessor (The Sentinel) features a pyramidal alien object. That, combined with Clarke’s TV shows exploring “mysterious” sites around the world, may have been enough to generate the story of his interest in the mountain, despite his sceptical approach (see below).

Some rumours about the site, including reference to Clarke, were posted to a forum in 2009:

There was an expedition here recently and now more and more attention is being directed at this place, which is not really to my liking.They have classified the mountain as a pyramid.It is pyramid shaped,but it also has a pyramid inside.Inside,there is also some sort of crystal, and no planes fly over Mt.Rtanj,because they disappear off the radar,in fact,there is talk that some might have disappeared altogether.Whatever is inside is surrounded by 3 underground lakes,and we know that water amplifies.Put all that together with it lying on an extremely powerful energy grid.There is talk of finding gold here as well.In fact there is an old closed down mine right near the mountain.A jewish family were the owners and there is talk that the head of the family was killed for some reason,and then the mines were closed.It’s as though someone wanted to get rid of them and close off this area.Then there’s talk of Tito,allowing alien bases to be built in 3 mountains.

There is a star gate here,I know it.And I plan on going here with a mission in mind.One which I will not disclose,and if I don’t come back,you’ll all know that the aliens have taken me.

…Arthur C Clarke even wrote that it is not a mountain but a pyramid.He also said,the oldest.

Whoever posted this is now listed as “account closed” so the aliens must indeed have “taken” him or her.

Further supposed details were posted to a New Age site in 2011:

RTANJ – NAVEL OF THE WORLD

…Regarding the pyramids, the one next door to Bosnian pyramids, RTANJ, SERBIA, IS NAVEL OF THE WORLD, CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION.

http://youtu.be/-GTuOfPIBcM

RTANJ in Serbia is the largest and oldest building pyramid construction in the world.

NASA and Arthur C. Clarke did considerable research on this mountain, which NASA SUPRESSED.

Arthur C. Clarke called Rtanj ‘navel of the world’ and stated that RTANJ is different from any other pyramid in the world.

Etc…

Meanwhile, here’s Clarke pondering the mysteries of the universe:

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From the London Times:

Nadine Dorries, the Tory MP who appeared on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, has accused journalists of invading her privacy and threatened to call the police if they turn up to her constituency office.

This is, of course, Dorries’ default position when it comes to unwelcome attention: in the past, she has complained to the police about on-line critics of her behaviour as a public figure, including her former election rival Linda Jack, and on one occasion she even claimed to have reported someone for libel (really).

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail claims that the paper has been trying to reach her in relation to a speech she made in Parliament in 2010:

All week, the Mail has also been trying to get Mrs Dorries to answer the same question. But she failed to respond to our emails and phone calls to her Westminster office.

Instead, she went on the attack on Twitter: ‘If another journalist visits my home, members of my family, their homes or my office, I will inform the police,’ she declared in one outburst. ‘This is harassment.’ In fact, the only other member of her family who has been approached by us is Mr Dorries.

Harassment? Or legitimate journalistic question?

Dorries’ 2010 speech was an attack on the allegedly “corrupt dealings” of an investment company called WorldSpreads; however, according to the Mail:

But there was one thing — or, rather, one person — Mrs Dorries failed to mention when she rose to her feet in the Commons to highlight the scandal. 

This was financial adviser Paul Dorries…They separated in around 2007. 

It appears that shortly after their split, 59-year-old Mr Dorries began introducing the very investors Mrs Dorries later referred to in her speech to WorldSpreads, for which he was to receive commission.

Investors advised by Mr Dorries appear to have lost life-changing amounts of money, but although the very name “WorldSpreads” obviously implies high risk (the crucial clue being the term “spread betting”), Nadine Dorries  insists that the money was lost due to criminal malpractice; and indeed, on Twitter today, Dorries complains that the Mail article failed to mention that the company is allegedly currently “being investigated by the police”. Accusations by others against the company – which has since entered administration – were noted by the Telegraph in April. Dorries’ speech referred to WorldSpreads as a “stockbroking firm”, which, as Unity at Ministry of Truth noted in 2011, was inaccurate (Unity’s post, as usual, also contains a great deal of other important background details).

The Mail makes it clear that Paul Dorries also regards himself as a “victim” of WorldSpreads, and that there is no evidence of impropriety on his part. However, the paper also notes court judgements against him in relation to duff investment advice concerning “an internet venture based on the concept of Facebook” thought up by his “associates”.

There’s also evidence of questionable judgement: he allegedly tried to reassure one investor who had received a devastating statement that she was half a million quid down “that something must have gone wrong with the WorldSpreads computer”, and he apparently took financial advice of his own – from a psychic:

The psychic was approached by Mr Dorries, he says, who came armed with a list of companies, then asked him which ones would be successful. ‘I pointed out about 20.’ Mr Dorries was delighted with the results, apparently, and came back to see him.

Paul Dorries’ business dealings were previously discussed on a blog run by Chris Paul (which has since become infected with malware, according to Google – here’s Wayback’s cache), and this post included the claim that disgruntled investors had hired a private detective agency (Mike Lenny & Co) to investigate him; shortly after Paul published his piece, his blog received anonymous comments stating that Mr Dorries had (perhaps inevitably) reported him to the police. The comments specifically mentioned  Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, and this detail also appeared in a letter sent by Nadine Dorries to police on the same day (this is all discussed here). The comments came in on 10 July 2010; Nadine Dorries raised the issue of WorldSpreads in Parliament on 27 July 2010.

The Mail article also raises questions about Dorries’ marital status:

…our research has been unable to unearth any trace of a marriage certificate in this country. Some of Mrs Dorries’s relatives, we have been told, were surprised never to have been shown wedding photographs of the happy couple. 

…just as we could not find any trace of a marriage certificate using the obvious search terms, we could find no record of their divorce, either, in the Central Index of Decree Absolutes at the Principal Registry of the Family Division in London.

However, a mid-November article in the same paper (by a different journalist) has the detail that

The date of Nadine and Paul’s wedding is unclear — the Mail has been unable to find any trace of a marriage in this country. It is likely they married abroad.

Miss Dorries has spoken in the past about how, early on in the marriage, they spent a year together in Zambia…

This article also details the “shock” existence of a supposed “secret husband” – which in fact turns out to have been a previous husband before Paul Dorries, whom she has dropped from her official biography. It’s not a subject of any real interest to anyone, and it’s not an avenue of enquiry that on-line critics of her public activities have ever felt the need to explore; Unity wrote in the same post that “there is apparently a first husband out there… but please don’t pursue the matter any further than this as I’ve been advised that he’s much better off out of things”.

According to the Mail, Dorries married this man when she was very young and had just suffered a bereavement, and one can understand why she wouldn’t feel the need to keep reminding the world – and herself – of a unhappy personal matter from the 1970s. However, the fact the Mail knows of him at least puts to bed a possibility that had crossed my mind, which is that the Dorries marriage certificate couldn’t be found due to confusion over Nadine’s surname at the time. Personally, though, I’m not convinced that there’s anything “weird” or of wider interest about her past marital arrangements.

UPDATE (August 2019): Paul is no longer with us, and on social media Dorries has described him as her husband, whom she nursed in his final illness – this is despite having written an op-ed for The Times in March 2019 in which she discussed her divorce as a model for Brexit negotiators and referred explicitly to her “ex-husband”, and despite her own references to another man as being her “partner”. Her announcement garnered much online sympathy, and one person who dared to ask about the anomaly was given short shrift by her supporters. In contrast to 2012, the media doesn’t appear to have shown any interest.

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From Reza Kahlili at WND :

Iran has 170 ballistic missiles aimed at Tel Aviv, many with biological warheads, WND has learned.

According to a source who served in Iran’s Intelligence Ministry and who recently defected, the Islamic regime has 170 missiles targeted at Tel Aviv from underground silos, some of which are armed with biological warheads.

…As reported in the Washington Times in August, a commentary in Mashregh, the media outlet of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, confirmed that the Islamic regime not only has weapons of mass destruction but has armed its terrorist proxies with them, including Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. The commentary warned Israel that if the fighting in Syria does not stop, an all-out attack on the Jewish state will be launched and that at zero hour, Tel Aviv will be the first city to be destroyed.

Note that “as reported in the Washington Times” is actually a self-citation. I discussed Kahlili in July: apparently he worked as some kind of informant for the CIA in Iran in 1980s, although his claim to have infiltrated the Revolutionary Guards is regarded with scepticism by security experts.

Kahlili purports to have continuing access to privileged information about Iran that no-one else can verify or even assess, and this has provided the basis for a stream of highly dramatic claims over the past few months, all published at WND.  In April, a “source in the Revolutionary Guards” told him about Iranian “terror cells” in the USA; the following month, a former officer “who defected to a country in Europe” warned that “the Guards’ intelligence office also runs operations out of mosques and Islamic centers around the world”; in July “a former Revolutionary Guards official who has now defected to a country in Europe said that Iran has other secret nuclear sites not known by the West where scientists are working on the nuclear bomb project.”

On one occasion in he provided a link to an external site in Persian which contained an interview with a “former Iranian official”, but other than that we just have to take his word for it all (that article, also from July, was entitled “40,000 Iran Agents in Western Hemisphere”, although the url suggests it was originally called “Army of Iranian Sadists Poised for US Invasion”).

So, does Kahlili have access to stream of defectors with new intelligence information? That seems highly unlikely – but if all his information is coming from someone who defected in April or May (at the very latest), why is it all coming out piecemeal, month after month? And why is the supposed source publishing his revelations via a fringe-right website known primary for promoting conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s birth and citizenship?

Kahlili’s August Washington Times piece was at least based on a published source:

Israel will be obliterated by chemical, microbial and nuclear bombs, Iran is warning, but those weapons of mass destruction will be used first on Tel Aviv by Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad at the start of a decades-old Muslim dream of destroying the Jewish state.

An alarming commentary last week in Mashregh, the media outlet of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, confirmed that the Islamic regime not only has WMDs but has armed its terrorist proxies with them. Mashregh speaks for the regime.

No reference is given, although I was able to trace the source back to here. The article is tricky to interpret for those of us confined to Google Translate, but it’s clearly belligerent and sanguinary. Here’s the automatic translation for the relevant passages (I’ve avoided tidying it up, in case I accidentally introduce distortions):

…Armed groups armed with weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological and nuclear) that have been able to get them through the black market, and certainly will be aimed at Tel Aviv.

…However, although the stated goals of Zionist alliance, allied forces quickly sought to dominate Syria’s chemical arsenal will claim. But who can guarantee that this group of countries listed above have not already equipped with weapons., Or weapons of mass destruction have been traded on the Tel Aviv after the Soviet collapse in a failed.

Certainly, the screed is hateful, and, given official censorship in Iran, it also reflects on the country’s government. But it hardly amounts to being an intelligence source.

Mashregh News also came to wider attention in September, when it published a piece claiming that homosexuality is a Jewish conspiracy. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, who, although a polemicist, has scholarly expertise on Iran, describes the agency as having “close ties to the Revolutionary Guard”.

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WND promotes a new product from Jonthan Cahn:

The newest, fast-paced, highly produced, one-hour teaching DVD from Jonathan Cahn and the WND Films team that brought you “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” is called “The Masada Mystery.”

For 2,000 years, God kept a scroll hidden on top of Masada in the Israeli wilderness waiting for the Jewish people to come back to the land and uncover it. Discover this awesome prophecy of God and what it has to do with you in Cahn’s “The Masada Mystery.”

Cahn is the author of The Harbinger, which, like The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment, claims that events on and after 9/11 parallel the Biblical account of God’s wrath against Israel’s faithlessness. The book is currently a top-selling Christian paperback in the USA. Cahn’s “Masada Mystery” seems to be a recycled effort from before he was famous – it’s also listed as a DVD and CV on his own website, although dated to 1998.

As far as I am aware, the only source to have published anything about “a scroll hidden on top of Masada” is a certain Donovan Joyce, who wrote a crank paperback in the 1970s entitled The Jesus Scroll (subtitle: “a timebomb for Christianity?”). Joyce claimed to have been shown the scroll by a certain “Dr Grosset”, and that it contained Jesus’ own account of his life after surviving the crucifixion. Inevitably, Jesus had married Mary Magdalene and become a father, and he also described himself as the last Hasmonean king of Israel. Alas, however, Grosset then took the scroll to the Soviet Union and was never seen again, so we have to take Joyce’s word for it all.

Historically, of course, this is drivel – and to believing Christians, utterly repellent. Does Cahn think there’s some truth in it, or does he have an alternative bunkum yarn about a scroll on Masada? It’s not clear, but I’m not about to buy the video to find out.

However, it is worth noting that WND‘s trailer for the video has very little to do with historic Christianity; although Cahn is supposedly a Messianic Jew who accepts Jesus as the Messiah, the trailer presents a religion in which the State of Israel has completely displaced Jesus. Cahn is heard in full flow:

In the early 60s, Israel decided to return to its ancient grave [Masada]. This night a most profound fulfilment of God’s prophetic word – the resurrection of Israel.

…The nation of Israel lives, the God of Israel lives, and you are his children. Therefore rise up to life in the same power; L’chaim, to life. Amen.

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Oh noes; from Chuck Rogers at Conservative Fact Check (H/T LGF):

As of today, “TechDude” is no longer on our masthead.

One of our readers has shown us strong evidence that “TechDude” is using credentials that aren’t accurate; in fact, they are copied from somebody else.

…I should point out that I have not met “TechDude” in person. He contacted me via email shortly after this site was launched, and pointed me to his work featured on the Atlas Shrugs blog. I was impressed, and offered him the (unpaid) position as our resident technical expert.

When I confronted him with the information about the plagiarized credentials, he first claimed not to be the same “TechDude” who had forged those credentials. But then I pointed him toward his emails in which he claimed to be the same “TechDude” who had helped Atlas Shruggs [sic] with their Obama forged birth certificate investigation, in which Pamela Gellar listed those same credentials…

“Techdude” was promoted by Geller in 2008, after the Obama campaign published a copy of Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth in June of that year; she described him as “an expert by occupation” (italics in original), and she commended his “superb and detailed analysis”. Geller did not just “list” his credentials; she guaranteed their veracity:

I know who Techdude is and I have checked him out thoroughly. He is he is an active member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, American College of Forensic Examiners, The International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners, International Information Systems Forensics Association – the list goes on. He also a board certified as a forensic computer examiner, a certificated legal investigator, and a licensed private investigator. He has been performing computer based forensic investigations since 1993 (although back then it did not even have a formal name yet) and he has performed countless investigations since then.

TechDude’s “findings” consisted of interminable ramblings about “heat maps” on the image and such, and she was still promoting the supposed “mystery” in January 2011.

Was Geller hoodwinked, or was she in on the deception? [Or is there another explanation? – see update below] After all, she doesn’t usually care about the provenance of her information; examples include her promotion of Joel Gilbert (creator of the bogus “Obama wears a Muslim ring” claim, which she endorsed and then quietly deleted from her site); of Ulsterman (a hoaxer who claimed to have inside information that Obama had tried to prevent the operation against Bin Laden); and, most infamously, of a long crank screed by one of her own commentators (a certain Rudy Schultz) that included the claim that Obama’s father was Malcolm X (although Geller later distanced herself from the claim, complaining bitterly that “the Malcolm X claim is one minor part” of the story, and that she herself didn’t believe it).

Eventually, of course, Obama released his long-form birth certificate, in April 2011; inevitably, Geller and others immediately asserted that this must be a forgery, too.

So where does Conservative Fact Check‘s discovery of TechDude’s apparent dishonesty leave Birtherism? Rogers has reassurance for those whose faith may have been shaken:

I don’t doubt for a second that Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery — many other people, including Mr. Donald Trump, have said the same thing, so the evidence is overwhelming.

UPDATE: It seems that it’s slightly more complicated: it’s possible that TechDude lied to Rogers about his identity, rather than lying to Geller about his credentials. Obama Conspiracy Theories explains:

While the association between Adam Fink and TechDude is well known, and has been so since imaging expert Neal Krawetz published it in August of 2008, the best information I have is that TechDude is not impersonating Adam Fink; he IS Adam Fink. Fink denied this, but the evidence is pretty solid to the contrary.

So we have TechDude who either lied about his credentials, or lied about not being Adam Fink.

The relevant point is that whoever he is, his image analysis of Obama’s original birth certificate image was a fraud. He deliberately altered the image to make it look suspicious and this was fully covered in  Dr. Krawetz’ article.

…someone posting as G at the Barackryphal web site did further research, reporting the conclusion that TechDude and Fink were one and the same.

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A particularly strange exchange between self-described “ex-terrorist” Walid Shoebat and Christian Zionist radio host Sid Roth:

Sid:… you also told me that on both sides of your family there’s Jewish ancestry and you went a bit further; most of the Palestinians you tell me have Jewish ancestry. Why do you say that?

Walid: Well, because I researched the archives of my family heritage, the Shoebat clan comes from Harris Ben Cobb [see below], a Jew who converted to Islam. Before him he knew Harris Ben Cobb comes from a Ashomel Ben Adaya, no Muslim has the name Shomoel in fact if you look at Wikipedia Shomoel Ben Adaya was a Jew who created [sic] to Islam in Yemen.

This makes little sense. First, Samaw’al ibn ‘Adiya was a pre-Islamic Arab poet in Yemen who was either a convert to Judaism or of Jewish descent, not a Jewish convert to Islam (as “Shmu’el Ben Adaya”, he has a street named after him in Jerusalem). Second, “Cobb” is an English surname, and “Harris” is an English first name. Perhaps there’s a Jewish “Ben Cobb” surname of which I am unaware, but either way, it seems unlikely that a person with such a name would be the origin of the Palestinian Shuaybat clan, or that the family of such a person could be traced back to a sixth-century Yemeni poet.

It’s also not clear how he would have Jewish ancestry on his American side. According to his own account in Why We Left Islam (blogged here), he states that (pp. 19-20):

My maternal grandfather, F.W. Georgeson… was a great friend of Winston Churchill.

Frederick W. Georgeson was the mayor of Eureka, California; according to a 1915 biography here, he was born in Scotland, and his wife was from Iowa and named Thompson. However, elsewhere he names Georgeson as his “Great Grandfather”, and from the birth date (F.W. was born in 1858) it seems likely that there is at least one intermediate generation (Incidentally, Georgeson’s supposed association with Churchill appears to have eluded the attention of historians and biographers).

Shoebat’s more general point of a genetic link between Jews and Palestinians has some scientific validity, although it’s a strange line for him to make, and in his case his argument is based on a supposed special access to knowledge:

…in all Palestinian homes you will find the Star of David in front of every home. The Star of David you will find Palestinians who still observe many things Jewish. Eating the lamb standing up comes from Exodus.

That “in all Palestinian homes you will find the Star of David” is a new one to me.

UPDATE: Shoebat now explains:

First off, you stated “”Cobb” is an English surname, and “Harris” is an English first name.”
end quote.

You misspelled the name, it is “Al-Harith Ben Ka’ab” and he has no links to any English names.

And indeed, no one in the world can deny his CONNECTION to Samuel Ben Adaya who according to Al-Ma’rifa is of Bani Dayan.

Actually, I didn’t misspell the name, although I’ll plead guilty to assuming that Roth and Shoebat had managed to produce a competent transcript between them.

Shoebat further explains that both Al-Harith Ben Ka’ab and Ben Adaya were members of the “Bani Dayan”, although I have not been able to trace further references to this particular group. Who exactly Shoebat means by “Al-Harith Ben Ka’ab” remains unclear, too; there was a sixth-century Christian martyr in Yemen named Al-Harith ibn Ka’ab (var. Harith ibn Kaleb, or St Arethas), who was executed by Dhu Nuwas, but also a more general  Banu Harith b. Ka’b group, which adopted Judaism in the pre-Islamic period. Of course, the existence of Jewish tribes in Arabia at this time is well-known and uncontroversial. Shoebat concedes that describing Ben Adaya as a Jewish convert to Islam was “a slip”. For some reason, Shoebat did not make clear to Sid Roth that the figures he presents as having special significance for his family history lived 1,500 years ago.

Shoebat also wishes it to be known that a 1929 newspaper report mentioned F.W. Georgeson meeting Winston Churchill in 1929, when Churchill was touring the west coast of the USA, and that a 1982 newspaper report recalling the incident described Georgeson as Churchill’s “old friend”. However, I have yet to find any references to the two men’s friendship in biographies of Churchill.

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From WND:

‘PASSION OF THE CHRIST’ ‘SEQUEL’ LOOKING FOR YOU
Makers of ‘The Resurrection’ seek ‘spiritual producers’ for revolutionary film

The reason that the word “sequel” is in quotation marks is because the proposed film has no connection whatsoever with the makers of The Passion of the Christ:

 …the makers of “The Resurrection,“ the unofficially dubbed “sequel” to Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” are building a grassroots movement – and looking for you – to help create a film that proclaims not only the love of Christ, but also His triumph over the grave.

Inevitably, it turns out that the opportunity to be a “spiritual producer” in fact means an opportunity to donate money. But who has “dubbed” the so-far unmade film a “sequel”? According to a Christian Post report from March, we’re told only that

Hollywood promoter and producer David Wood… plans to produce what some in the Christian filmmaking community and beyond believe will be “God’s sequel” to the film, depicting the events surrounding the resurrection and the 40 days that followed.

Wood announced his plan “after wrapping up the 4-day Kingdom Economic Yearly Summit (KEYS) in Los Angeles which featured a network of Christian leaders in the movie and promotional marketing industries”; Wood was the “Local Host” at this event, which brought together “Marketplace Spiritual Fathers & Mothers”. This seamless blend of salesmanship and spirituality can also be seen in Wood’s bio blurb:

David Wood is the Executive Producer and Owner of Dread Warrior Productions, a media and funding company. He is also the co-founder of The Global Apostolic Council, a spiritual think tank group.

David has been in the Media, Technology and Fundraising business for 30 years doing numerous productions, casting, and promotions with companies such as MTV, HBO, NBC, CBS, Fox TV, and Universal Studios, to name but a few.

He now spends all of his time working on God’s business with such global thinking groups as the Global Apostolic Council, Global Day of Prayer, Groundwire, Mission America Coalition, Power to Change, Cities of the World, the International Prayer Council, the Institute for Global Affairs, K.E.Y.S., The Barnabas Group, Wedgewood Circle in addition to actively executive producing and developing media projects.

A few of the projects David is currently involved with is the movie, The Resurrection, a film many believe will be God’s sequel to Mel Gibson’s hit, The Passion of the Christ. David is also the Executive Producer of the International Pan Pacific Film Festival, which is a family faith film festival.

He is also currently working on a new family faith web media and community platform called, Good News Network. The big play for David is a $500 million dollar raise to build a movie studio facility in Hollywood for God in the family faith area so his team can control all aspects of production, distribution, finance, marketing, etc.

The film has number of sponsors, as well as a “Stewarding Council” that includes industry specialists and religious figures.

Wood’s “Dread Warrior Productions” does not appear to have a website, and the grandiose-sounding “Global Apostolic Council” seems to be the same thing as the “Global Apostolic Council 4 California“:

The Global Apostolic Council 4 California is committed to building strategic alliances to encourage global corporate unity in the Body of Christ. It is our desire to unify the local and statewide Church in California, in a new wineskin, touching the arts, entertainment & media through prayer & God’s love, in order to reach beyond our territorial limits to affect the global Church and the world!

We acknowledge that we are a part of a larger Body of believers, worldwide, that is called of God to complete His work prior to His return. Through developing strong relationships, uniting in prayer and developing divine strategies, we want to do our part in gathering the local Body of Christ in California through the “Global Gate of Hollywood”.

We use the term “Global Gates” to refer to seats of power, places of influence where key decisions are made. The Bible teaches that designated elders sat at the city gates and made decisions and exercised authority that affected their region, the surrounding territories and in some cases, the world! (Ps. 24:7)

Wood is listed as one of ten committee members, as is Wolfgang Kovacek of “HisPowerPortal”. Kovacek also has a website of his own, where his various business and network achievements are listed alongside professional religious activities such as (link added):

Executive Producer and Director of “Hollywood Transformation”, a 42 Minute documentary about what God’s plan is for Hollywood and the entertainment industry. He was invited to South Africa to present the video at the International Prayer Council.

That documentary includes input from the likes of Lou Engle and Ted Baehr.

In June 2011, the “Global Apostolic Council for California” held a Global Day of Prayer, oddly in Jacksonville, Florida. Numerous pastors are listed as “partners”, the best-known being Ché Ahn (“I want to encourage every believer who is in town to make it to this historic event”) – Ahn is close to C. Peter Wagner and Engle, and the above reference to “Global Gates” has a familiar ring to anyone who knows anything about their movement’s Dominionist rhetoric. The blurb for one of The Resurrection‘s “Stewards”, Michelle Seidler, specifically references the Dominionist “7 Mountains” concept.

The official websites for The Resurrection (there are two of them) feature an impressive mock-up poster, complete with indistinct film credits at its base, although so far there is no script or even any casting; according to Wood,

Rather than financing the film through investors or a studio system at the beginning, the vision we have is a global marketing campaign via grassroots marketing, social media, crowd funding that will then unite all believers in Christ. The global marketing strategy will proceed through all stages of production, casting, editing, music, etc.

There is, though, a funding countdown clock, currently set at 176 days. As of today, $7,635 has been raised.

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