Bartholomew's Notes

Neo-Pentecostal evangelist Rick Joyner has published an account of the 2012 Oak Initiative Summit, which took place earlier this month:

…It was an exceptional gathering with many calling it the best yet. It began with a stunning presentation by Kevin Freeman, the author of Secret Weapon, which well deserves its present rise on the New York Times bestseller list. It is a brilliant and scholarly work on one of the greatest threats to America in these times—economic terrorism.

It is well-known that events like the 2008 stock market crash were caused by someone trying to do great harm to America. … Secret Weapon is an evaluation of how economic terrorism caused the U.S. Stock Market crash in 2008, who the source was, and how it can happen again

…We will do all that we can to circulate the DVD of this presentation. I encourage all Oak members to watch it carefully and to buy this important book. This is not just another conspiracy theory but illuminates a very real threat to America.

Freeman’s “not just another conspiracy theory” has been around for a while; in March 2011 it featured in both the Washington Times and on the Glenn Beck show. Ryan Chittum took the measure of it, for the Columbia Journalism Review:

…This is the perfect Fox News story: based on innuendo rather than fact, fear rather than reason, and swarthy terrorists are to blame instead of ruddy capitalists. The icing on the cake: Reporting the story sows confusion, misdirecting attention from Murdoch-supported policies like deregulation that actually caused the crisis and onto our enemies, including Al Qaeda, Iran, China, and even Hugo Chavez. Hey, maybe George Soros is involved? See: You can report anything when you put a question mark after it and say you were just asking a question.

Some reports described Freeman as a “Pentagon contractor”, although “Pentagon subcontractor’s subcontractor” would appear to be a more accurate designation. Freeman produced a report in 2009; according to the preamble:

The report was originally published under contractual arrangement with a subcontractor of the Department of Defense Irregular Warfare Support Program (IWSP) per contractual arrangement between the sub-contractor and Cross Consulting and Services, LLC.

Cross Consulting is Freeman’s business, operating as part of his “Freeman Global Investment Counsel”; according to a blurb, he used to work for Sir John Templeton’s Templeton Private Client Group, and he

…has consulted for and briefed members of both the U.S. House and Senate, present and past CIA, DIA, FBI, SEC, Homeland Security, the Justice Department, as well as local and state law enforcement.

Alas, however, Andrew Leonard noted at Salon that

It seems the Pentagon no longer wants to have anything to do with Freeman’s thesis, and even though it was submitted as source material to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, failed to be included in the final report. So clearly, there is a conspiracy to suppress Freeman’s truth-telling.

Joyner continues:

After Kevin, I spoke on “the four winds of the earth” from Revelation 7. In 1990, I was shown that these are the Military, Religious, Political, and Economic powers that bring sweeping civilization-wide changes to the earth, have set the course of history, and are determining present events in the natural realm. 

Nothing in the text of Revelation 7 supports this interpretation, but the rest of us don’t have secret meanings to the Bible “shown” to us by God. It should be recalled that God has also warned Joyner that the west coast of the USA is about to be destroyed by an earthquake.

Other Summit speakers included Janet Folger-Porter (previously blogged here) and Bob Weiner, as well as two men with whom Joyner is particularly close: these are the perennially controversial Gen “Jerry” Boykin, and Nicholas Papanicolaou, with whom Joyner shares membership in a “chivalric order” (see background here):

Last year, The Oak circulated a seven-minute video on the theme of Marxist Insurgency by Gen. Boykin and it went viral very fast, reaching millions. To some degree, this has been a topic of conversation around the world. The extended message Gen. Boykin gave Friday morning backed up and well established the precepts of the short video. It was as captivating as Kevin’s presentation had been the night before and helped to even further establish some of the conclusions of Kevin’s message. This is another “must-see” DVD we will be circulating.

… Nicholas pointed out that the Constitution is clear that the “Congress” shall not establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise of it. This means that as the Constitution also makes clear that any authority not specifically given to the Federal Government by the Constitution is reserved by the States, so the States do have the freedom and the authority to establish religion.

Somewhat surprisingly, Joyner’s report includes the suggestion of a third-party candidate to fight the next election:

Even Republicans are beginning to talk about the possibility of a third party candidate. Most react to even mentioning this with the traditional wisdom that a third party candidate would ensure the re-election of Obama, but not necessarily. The right one would not only cause Obama to have to fight on two fronts, but would also have a very serious chance of winning. Even some of the most loyal Republicans are now getting increasingly distraught at the GOP’s establishment that they see leading them to a second defeat by Obama.

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A rather bizarre hit-piece in the Sunday Telegraph:

He has railed against the evils of religion, and lectured the world on the virtues of atheism.

Now Richard Dawkins, the secularist campaigner against “intolerance and suffering”, must face an awkward revelation: he is descended from slave owners and his family estate was bought with a fortune partly created by forced labour.

One of his direct ancestors, Henry Dawkins, amassed such wealth that his family owned 1,013 slaves in Jamaica by the time of his death in 1744.

…In an unwitting anticipation of a later Dawkins’s opposition to religion, the Anti-Slavery Reporter also castigated Jamaica’s rulers for making slaves work on Sunday: they couldn’t worship and were condemned to “toil and secularity”.

…He is now facing calls to apologise and make reparations for his family’s past.

Esther Stanford-Xosei, of Lewisham, south London, the co-vice chairman of the Pan-African Reparations Coalition in Europe, said:… “The most appropriate course would be for the family to fund an educational initiative telling the history of slavery and how it impacts on communities today, in terms of racism and fractured relationships.”

This is of course in a long tradition of hacks generating pseudo-news rather than actually reporting anything of interest. The article has appeared à propos of nothing in particular, and the main revelation is hardly new: the details of Henry Dawkins’ estate and slave-ownership can be found in Richard B. Sheridan’s Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623-1775 (2000: 225-226), which is available on Google Books preview, and Richard Dawkins’ links to the Dawkins family estate of Over Norton are hardly secret.

Lusher also cites quotes relating to other Dawkins family members who opposed the abolition of slavery; Lusher appears to have found these himself, although the material is again readily available on Google Books. All that Lusher needed to complete the non-story was someone willing to provide the “calls to apologise and make reparations”, and a phone-call or email to Stanford-Xosei provided that.

Lusher’s article also reports Dawkins’ own reaction:

He quoted Scripture – disparagingly – to insist: “I condemn slavery with the utmost vehemence, but the fact that my remote ancestors may have been involved in it is nothing to do with me.

“One of the most disagreeable verses of the Bible – amid strong competition – says the sins of the father shall be visited on the children until the third or fourth generation.”

Audibly irritated, he added: “You need a genetics lecture. Do you realise that probably only about 1 in 512 of my genes come from Henry Dawkins?

Dawkins has given a fuller response on his own website:

…I was ready for yet another smear or diversionary tactic of some kind, but in my wildest dreams I couldn’t have imagined the surreal form this one was to take.

When he persisted with his insinuations I made my somewhat peremptory excuses and left (I was in a hurry because I was about to go on stage in London to give a lecture and wanted to prepare for it).

I’d scarcely had time to re-open my lecture notes when he rang back: “Darwinian natural selection has a lot to do with genes, do you agree?” Of course I agreed. “Well, some people might suggest that you could have inherited a gene for supporting slavery from Henry Dawkins.”

Dawkins goes on to explain the scientific problems with Lusher’s insinuations, although these should be glaringly obvious to anyone who is even half-educated.

UPDATE: The Daily Mail wades in, with a piece entitled “Revealed: How atheist Richard Dawkins’ family fortune came from the slave trade”:

Ancestors of secularist campaigner Richard Dawkins made their fortune from the slave trade, it has been revealed.

…In 2010 Dawkins, an firm admirer of Charles Darwin, spoke of how his father inherited the family estate but never mentioned how his distant relatives had made their fortune.

…Equality groups are now calling on him to apologise for his family’s past.

A caption under a photo of Dawkins adds the detail that:

Richard Dawkins has condemned slavery despite his ancestors making their money through forced labour

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Some exchanges between Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, and Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus and “Europe’s Last Dictator“.

Cyril to Alex, reported 31 August 2010:

Dear Alexander Grigoryevich,

Many happy returns of the day.

Working in the high and important office of President of the Republic of Belarus for many years, you have gained the love of your people who see in you not only a political leader and head of state but also a man who takes care of ordinary citizens of your country…

Cyril to Alex, reported 23 December 2010:

“I cordially congratulate you on the victory in the election of the President of the Republic of Belarus. Occupying the supreme state office in the previous years, you have faithfully served your country and people. The results of the election have demonstrated the level of people’s trust in you,” Patriarch Kirill said in a message addressed to the President of Belarus, which is available on the official website of Moscow Patriarchate.

Alex to Cyril, reported 1 February 2011:

President Alexander Lukashenko has sent a message of greetings to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia on the occasion on the anniversary on his enthronement.

“We have a deep respect for you as an outstanding leader of the Christian world and a good friend of our country,” the message runs.

Alex to Cyril, reported 20 November 2011:

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has sent birthday greetings to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia.

“Belarus treats you with recognition and cordiality. Let your good advice and wise precept help us live according to evangelic commandments,” the President noted.

Alex to Cyril, reported 1 February 2012:

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko congratulates Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Cyril on his enthronement anniversary.

“Your self-sacrificing devotion illustrates incessant spiritual improvement, – the congratulation says. – You always behave to Belarus with particular care and paternalism. We deeply feel and appreciate your friendly support and pastoral love. I am sure that your selfless activity will further support prosperity of the Orthodox Church, consolidation of unity of the people of the brotherly countries”.

This mutual backslapping follows the pattern set by Alexy II, Kyrill’s late predecessor.

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Sahara TV has a telephone interview with Pastor Godwin Umotong, who runs a franchise of Helen Ukpabio’s Liberty Gospel Church in Houston. Ukpabio was due to visit Houston in March, provoking the threat of protests; the Houston Press reported at the end of January (links added):

…The Pentecostal cleric [Ukpabio] claims to have the power to identify and exorcise “witch children” who are possessed by the devil. 

…critics, such as Staise Gonzalez, say that once children are identified as witches, especially in areas where people believe in sorcery, they are tortured and sometimes killed.

“These suspected witches have been treated in brutal and inhumane ways,” says Gonzalez, who is organizing 12 days of protest to correspond with Ukpabio’s appearance, scheduled from March 14 to March 25.

… An online petition through change.org is attempting to block U.S. entry to Ukpabio.

…Meanwhile, the Stand Against Helen Ukpabio Facebook page, created three weeks ago by Gonzalez, has nearly 900 likes as of the time this post was published.

However, Umotong has now told Sahara TV that the visit has been postponed to May.

The Sahara TV interviewer, Chika Oduah, gives Umotong plenty of rope with questions about his and Ukpabio’s beliefs (“Where are the mermaids*, by the way? Are they in the Gulf of Mexico?”), but for the most part Umotong  manages to avoid hanging himself: he emphasises that Ukpabio is coming to Houston to help consenting individuals, and that he is not overly concerned with witches – he tells Oduah that child-witchcraft did not come up during Ukpabio’s previous visit to Houston, in 2010, and that he himself only “prays” for those who need his help. However, he also states that children can be “initiated” into witchcraft.

It is important not to conflate Ukpabio’s practices with those of some other “ministries”, in which peripatetic healers perform bizarre and abusive rituals, or where children are harmed or abandoned after being identified as being witches. In contrast, witches who are brought to her church are simply prayed over, and once cured the former “witch” is reintegrated with his or her family.

Umotong makes the same distinction, but that does not get Ukpabio off the hook: children will only ever be safe from harm from witchcraft-related stigmatisation when belief in child witches has been eradicated. Ukpabio’s teaching keeps this harmful belief alive, and not everyone adversely influenced by her books and DVDs will come to her church. Further, to tell a child that he or she has caused family misfortune or bereavement through being a witch is obviously grotesquely cruel in itself.

It should also be noted that Ukpabio exhibits malign behaviour: her targets have included a man who runs a hostel for stigmatised children, whom she denounced as a “wizard”; the governor of Akwa Ibom state, whom she warned to “remember what happened to Saddam Hussein”; and the British actress Sophie Okonedo, who narrated the Channel 4 documentary on child-witches that brought her to wider attention. Ukpabio has also  personally endorsed crudely abusive websites registered by her webmaster; new sites have now appeared ahead of her visit to Houston.

Note

*”Mermaids” is a reference to a traditional African belief in water spirits known as “Mami Wata”. These spirits are venerated in traditional religion; some African Christians regard them as demonic beings.

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From the website of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition (link added):

The Tennessee Freedom Coalition is proud to announce an event coming your way in February!

We will be hosting the Strategic Engagement Group in Murfreesboro at the World Outreach Church for an evening event, “Understanding the Threat to America… Speakers for this event are EJ Kimball and Fred G[r]andy.

(I blogged on Grandy’s “Delta Airlines shariah” conspiracy theory here.)

So far so unremarkable: the TFC hosted an anti-shariah event in November, and SEG is known for its views on Islam as a grand conspiracy; its website warns of “The Global Islamic Movement”, which

includes the fifty-seven member states of the Organisation (sic) of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (formerly “Organization of the Islamic Conference”), Islamic Jihadi organizations like al-Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood (Arabic: Ikhwan). Each of these entities has declared openly, in official documents (i.e. factual/evidentiary), their commitment to the Movement’s shared dream of a Global Islamic State (AKA worldwide “Caliphate”) governed by Islamic Law.

However, the Tennessean has further details about the training event:

A former FBI agent who has claimed that Nashville’s mosques have no legal right to exist is training the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Department about Islam and the threats of terrorism.

John Guandolo, a former FBI agent and vice president of the Arlington, Va.-based Strategic Engagement Group, is leading training being held at World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro.

Guandolo featured in an NPR story in July about improper anti-terror training in Ohio. He was also profiled by Right Wing Watch back in 2009, after he made an appearance on a radio show hosted by David Barton. Barton introduced Guandolo as “the guy who briefed the FBI on terrorism and radical Islamic terrorism” until “so many Islamic folks worked their way into the FBI” and “got him thrown out”; Right Wing Watch, however, quotes a 2009 article from the The Times-Picayune which explains that Guandolo in fact left the FBI following an “intimate relationship” with a government witness he was supposed to be protecting, leading to the collapse of a corruption case.

The TFC also has a  blurb for the training event:

Tennessee Freedom Coalition is announcing an evening training program by The Strategic Engagement Group (SEG) entitled “Understanding the Threat to America”. This program has been presented to law enforcement, military, National Guard, intelligence professionals, prosecutors, and legislators.  This program is the premier training program in the United States in detailing terrorism matters, the nature of how the threats operate at the local and state level, the identity of front organizations, the doctrine the enemy uses, and strategies local, state and federal agencies can use to engage and defeat these threats.

An endorsement of SEG follows,

signed by former leaders in the Intelligence Community to include: Director, Central Intelligence; Director, Defense Intelligence Agency; Inspector General, Department of Defense; and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence…

Curiously, no names are given, but the SEG website has further details. Three of the men are Lt. Gen. Harry Soyster, Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin (previously blogged here), and R. James Woolsey.

Incidentally, the Tennessee Freedom Coalition also has links with two British groups. These are the UK Christian-Right lobby group Christian Concern, and the English Defence League. Further details here.

UPDATE: A report from WSMV adds the detail that

Guandolo talked about Hamas and its plan to destroy Western civilization from within, and spoke of Islamic centers as potential military compounds.

UPDATE 2: The Digital News Journal has a follow-up, noting “a class schedule submitted by the Rutherford County Sheriff’s office to the Tennessee Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission”:

…Titled “Understanding the Threat to America,” the course claims that all Muslims are required to wage war against non-believers.

“Under Islamic Law, non-Muslims must ultimately convert or submit to Islam or be killed,” the curriculum claims.

…Kimball said the presentation is only meant to be the start of an officer’s research into the subject.

…Lou Ann Zelenik, of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, which paid for this week’s training, said law enforcement officials need to know the truth about Islam and terrorism.

“We don’t need political correctness when it comes to the training our police and sheriffs,” she said. “This is accurate information. It’s not part of any agenda.”

Zelenik said her coalition introduced Strategic Engagement Group to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office. This week’s training is the second time SEG has trained Rutherford County deputies, she said.

UPDATE 3: As others have noted, the World Outreach Church and its pastor were in the news in 2010:

A plan to build an Islamic community center in the middle-Tennessee town of Murfreesboro sparked an eruption of ugly criticism on Thursday from some residents who don’t want a mosque built in their backyard.

More than 600 people turned out for a meeting of the Rutherford County Commission Thursday night, with some sharing their opposition in public comments that at times turned intolerant.

“We have a duty to investigate anyone under the banner of Islam,” Allen Jackson, the pastor of World Outreach Church, said at the meeting.

The church was founded in 1980 by Allen’s parents, George and Betty Jackson. The elder Jacksons were associates of Derek Prince, and are currently directors of Derek Prince Israel; Prince, who resided for much of his life in Israel, was a British neo-Pentecostal revivalist who emphasized Christian Zionism and spiritual warfare against demonic entities. According to Prince:

I believe Islam is the scepter of wickedness if ever there was a scepter of wickedness. And I can’t tell you how many times I declare into the air the scepter of wickedness shall not remain over the land allotted to the righteous. And I believe every time I say it the forces of darkness begin to reel back before the authority of scripture uttered in faith. 

Allen Jackson is himself close to the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem; ICEJ events have been held at WOC, and the ICEJ’s Rev. Malcolm Hedding is a member of WOC’s pastoral staff.

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A blog called The Palimpsest has details of how a young married woman was persuaded by a religious group to repudiate her marriage and her family. The blog’s author, Nathan Zamprogno, is the woman’s ex-husband, and his case has featured on Australian television:

 …She cast aside her home, her wider family, even her name for the sake of a pseudo-Christian group that she had never met six months previously. She now goes by a name given to her by the cult, Hope,  after she was told that the person named Kylie had never existed. At a point where she was mentally unwell and exceptionally vulnerable, this cult misdirected her therapy, providing instead what a psychologist identified as a “treatment program” written by a group who believe Nazi-built, demonically piloted UFOs kidnap women and impregnate them to create a race of half-demon super soldiers.

…Kylie’s natural affections for her family, which were so loyal; her maternal bond with our son, which was so fierce, were pared away. She was persuaded that they were evil; that she had spent her childhood exposed to satanic torture (Necessary interjection: Kylie’s family are good, kind, civically engaged people, and their support has been indispensable). Her illness, the presentation of alternate personalities, was perverted into some kind of spiritual attunement, a conduit to hear messages from Jesus springing from Kylie’s lips; her altered states the channel to a prophetic gift, to foretell the future; to detect and oppose “astrals”, which were satanists purportedly making psychic out of body attacks on the group.

Zamprogno names the group as the Springwood Faulconbridge Home Church, and he explains that he and his wife encountered this church while working at an interdenominational Christian school near Sydney.

Some time later, Zamprogno met another man who had lost his wife to the same group; this man had some papers belonging to the group which his wife had left behind:

I leaf through hundreds of pages of handwritten and typed documents, some in Kylie’s writing, and some in the hand of various cult members. Pronouncements, curses, abjurations. Notes made by cult members as they guided my wife’s therapy, encouraging her to verbalise ever more lurid accounts of satanic murder and torture, with no evidence that they ever stopped to ask if it was true, but ecstatically wishing it to be true; insisting, surely it must be still worse, and pray, go further? Crudely drawn pictures of stick figures having indignities performed on them with bombs, torture devices, even a helicopter suspending victims over a mine field. Kindergarten scrawls of obscenities, ostensibly written by Kylie as she “regressed” to infantile alters to re-live her traumas. Crayon daubings of rainbows, roughly done.

Further:

Throughout the notes I had been provided, there was the repeated reference to two names: “John and Glenys Darnell” and “The Shepherd’s Heart Church”, based in Canberra:

… John Darnell believes demons walk the earth in human guise, called “Nephilim”. They breed with women, creating half demon-half human hybrids. They fly around in Nazi-built, demonically piloted UFOs. They kidnap women and take them to a secret underground base where the half demon embryos are removed. Oh, and the British Royal Family may be reptilians. All of this wackiness is recorded in the church’s own materials, or in a series of radio interviews John Darnell gave to some fringe U.S based Christian radio stations over the last 2 years.

Read the full account: Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Darnell has a background with various house-church and Charismatic Christian groups; in particular, his website mentions a “group of churches God… largely based on the teachings of Mr George North, a powerful, authoritative minister”, Unity Bible College, and “Billy and Isobel Simpson… the worship leaders from Sunderland Christian Centre, a church where God poured out His Spirit in 1994”:

 Bill Simpson reached me, placed his hand on my head, and prayed “Lord, give him everything you have for him” I knew then that this was wonderfully of God. I managed to stand for about 10 seconds, and then completely overwhelmed by the presence and power of God, I collapsed. 

However, Darnell’s website does not indicate any current links with other churches, and Darnell does not appear to be answerable to anybody. Obviously, doctrines such as the “reptilian Royal Family” concept are derived from David Icke rather than from any sort of Christian teaching.

The “fringe U.S based Christian radio stations” which have given Darnell a platform include the Derek Dreamer Show, Firefall Talk Radio, and L.A. Marzulli’s Acceleration Radio. Marzulli in turn crosses over with some better-known US conspiracy theorists, such as George Noory. According to Marzulli,

John Darnell is on the front lines of ministry, in my opinion. He ministers in places that most of us will never see and only read about. He has been called to do what he does and I believe that he does it well and with a heart that is surrendered to God.

Darnell also has second website, devoted to a book called Satanic Strategies.

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From the website of the World Public Forum:

The World Public Forum “Dialogue of Civilizations” International Coordination Committee meeting was held on February 4, 2012 in Vienna, Austria. The ICC members discussed the forthcoming 10-th anniversary Rhodes Forum to be held in October 2012.

The meeting included a statement on tensions between Israel and Iran, helpully urging “all parties to use maximum restraint.”

Among those present was Vladimir Yakunin, one of the three co-founders of the forum. Yakunin runs Russia’s railways, and he is a close confidant of Vladimir Putin; reports describe him variously as an “Orthodox Christian Chekist” (a phrase recently used by singer Mikhail Borzykin in a song refering to “the group of KGB officers who came to power in Russia after President Boris Yeltsin resigned in 1999”) and as “the Kremlin’s model Orthodox businessman”. Yakunin also runs the Center of the National Glory of Russia and the Saint Andrew the First-Called Foundation, and these organisations are named as the “initiators” of the WPF. Some WFP events dovetail with the Foundation’s interests: the WPF held a conference on the subject of Mount Athos last summer (again in Austria) involving Archimandrite Ephraim, abbot of Athos’s Vatopedi Monastery. A few months later, the Foundation organised the first ever Russian tour of the Belt of the Mother of God, which is kept at Vatopedi .

Yakunin’s presence in Vienna for the co-ordination meeting was noted by Der Standard:

[Wladimir] Jakunin ist Chef der Russischen Eisenbahnen und Präsident des World Public Forum. Diese hauptsächlich von russischen Wirtschaftskreisen finanzierte Stiftung will mittels eines Dialogs der Kulturen einer behaupteten westlichen Wertedominanz etwas entgegensetzen.

Am Wochenende war Jakunin in Wien, wo das Sekretariat des World Public Forum angesiedelt ist, um den zehnten “Dialogue of Civilizations” im Oktober auf Rhodos vorzubereiten. Zu Sowjetzeiten stand Jakunin unter anderem als Diplomat in KGB-Dienste.

Yakunin told the Standard that unrest against Putin was due to people getting their information “from bloggers and the internet”; I noted a previous statement made by Yakunin on the subject here.

In the run-up to elections in Kazakhstan last March, Yakunin personally awarded President Nursultan Nazarbayev with a “Dialogue of Civilizations International Prize” on behalf of the WPF. This is just one link between the WPF and Kazakhstan: former Chancellor of Austria Alfred Gusenbauer is a co-chairman of the WPF and a “consultant” to Nazarbayev, while the chairman of the WPF’s International Coordination Committee is the Austrian politician Walter Schwimmer. Later this month there will be a “Celebratory Event to mark the 20th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between Kazakhstan and Austria”, at the Kazakh embassy in Vienna; Schwimmer will be the moderator, and the programme for the event highlights his WPF position. Just a few days ago, Schwimmer gushed that the authoritarian Nazarbayev (who is currently cracking down on opposition movements) is “a real politician and a wise leader of his nation”.

Alongside Yakunin, the World Public Forum has two other co-founders. One is a businessman named Nicholas Papanicolaou, who resides in America and who has links with the neo-Pentecostal segment of the Christian Right. As I’ve noted previously, Papanicolaou is a board member of Rick Joyner’s Oak Initiative, and he is the “Grand Master” of a chivalric order called  Knights Hospitallers of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, the Ecumenical Order (not to be confused with the more famous Roman Catholic “Knights of Malta”). Joyner is also involved in this Order, as “Deputy Member of the Supreme Council”, while the “Grand Chancellor” is none other than General William “Jerry” Boykin. In 2010, Papanicolaou and Boykin co-signed a fundraising letter on behalf of the Order which reflected Boykin’s well-known anti-Islam and anti-Obama views, and around the time of the last WPF meeting in Rhodes, Papanicolaou joined Boykin for an investiture ceremony on the island. (1) Joyner himself attended a WPF forum in 2009, alongside Bob Weiner (formerly of the controversial Maranatha Ministries) and Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition.

The third co-founder of the WPF was Jagdish Chandra Kapur, an Indian philosopher and futurologist who died in 2010. According to the WPF, he

contributed a lot to the transformation of the WPF “Dialogue of Civilizations” from a small seminar into a recognized international public organization that unite like-minded people from more than 60 countries. The ideas of Kapur about a dialogue of civilizations for the sake of a new globalization based on common human values laid the groundwork of themes for discussion. The Forum’s “Cosmic humanism” – this was his vision of the future which is to come into being by merging science and spirituality.

Close links with Kapur’s legacy remain; the Kapur Surya Foundation in New Delhi co-sponsors the WPF and sponsors the World Affairs Journal, which is listed as one of the WPF’s partners. The convenor of the editorial board of this journal is Come Carpentier de Gourdon, a French writer based in India who is also a consultant to Kapur’s Indfos Industries Ltd.  Carpentier de Gourdon has an esoteric perspective on world affairs; at the last WPF meeting in Rhodes he spoke of his

theory to unify science and traditional wisdom systems under the name of “cosmosophy and psychosynthesis”.

Carpentier de Gourdon also has an interest in “exopolitics”, referring to research into the role played by extra-terrestrials in human affairs, and he is on the advisory board of the Exopolitics Institute. In 2006 he spoke to the World Public Forum on the subject of “The Case for Exopolitics: Ushering in a Cosmic Dialogue”:

Earth is under observation, some say under some sort of quarantine, while mankind operates its transition towards full contact with and admission into the interplanetary Cosmic Community.

…The Dialogue between Civilisations will have to include, sooner or later, those beings and cultures that are not human, in the “homo sapiens” category but which clearly have a  presence on our planet and a stake in the future of terrestrial and human life. 

A site called Exopolitics.com added a note of commentary:

According to a well-placed observer, Come Carpentier de Gourdon’s presentation… at the Rhodos World Public Forum was well received, including some present and former officials from various governments asking for more information on Exopolitics and the Extraterrestrial issue. No one raised any doubts about the information.

****

(1) Joyner, who receives messages from God about how an earthquake will soon destroy the west coast of the USA, claims that he was introduced to the Order by an “Austrian baron”, and that his books were responsible for a “spiritual renewal” in the Order. Joyner also claims that his involvement “began a series of events that made Kurt Waldheim a believer as well” – a remarkable and otherwise undocumented incident in Waldheim’s life.

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Back in August, Nadine Dorries MP made the following statement in the Daily Mail:

One particularly obsessive man recently followed me round with a camera, whipped up online hysteria against me and eventually had to accept a police caution for harassment.

As I’ve blogged previously, the background to this claim was Tim Ireland’s invited presence to film a hustings event in Flitwick in 2010. Dorries complained to the police, and Tim subsequently spoke with the police at length voluntarily to explain the situation. Because Tim spoke to the police formally, the interview took place “under caution”. This meant that Tim’s statements could be regarded as evidence. However, there was no “police caution”, which would mean that police have judged a criminal infraction to have taken place. Dorries has elsewhere been more careful to use the “under caution” phrase, but in the above she is clearly misleading the public about the outcome of a police investigation.

Someone reminded her of this today on Twitter. Here’s the exchange:

@mrhazzers @NadineDorriesMP It’s difficult to take you seriously when you mislead about police investigations. #70%fiction

@nadinedorriesmp @mrhazzers That is libelous and an outright lie. My staff have taken a screen shot and reported your tweet to the police.

Mrhazzer’s “70%fiction” hashtag, of course, refers to Dorries’ infamous admission that her blog was “70 per cent fiction” after details published on her site put some of her expenses into question.

Her complaint against mrhazzers is nonsense: Dorries certainly misled the public about the police and Tim Ireland, and it’s not libellous to say so. And it’s certainly not a police matter either way.

Mrhazzers now joins a list of individuals whom Dorries has reported to the police. Alongside Tim, here are three others:

– Mrs Humphrey Cushion: “Mrs Cushion” is a constituent who has criticised Dorries on Twitter and on her blog. Last year, she was on sick leave from her carer job awaiting operations on her feet for arthritis – Dorries (helped by Paul Staines) tried to smear her as a benefits cheat, and Dorries’ bogus harassment complaint led to a visit from the police. Again, no further action was taken, but the police visit frightened her children, and it took place while she was in pain and lying in bed recuperating from the operations.

– Chris Paul: Paul is a Labour blogger whom Dorries accused of hanging “around outside” her house due to “sexual” interest. In fact, there was no evidence of either.

– Linda Jack: Jack had the temerity to stand against Dorries for the Liberal Democrats in the 2010 General Election, and Dorries accused her of being part of a “group” opposed to her.

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(Updated – thanks to commentators below for highlighting relevant YouTube video)

Paula White’s lawyer on White being wrapped in a Torah scroll by Ralph Messer: “My client categorically and unequivocally denies that that ever happened”

Paula White on Rabbi Ralph Messer, 2009 (or perhaps earlier):

With me today is my very special guest. He is no stranger to many of you. He is a man of God that God has gifted to this generation: Rabbi Ralph Messer. He’s an internationally acclaimed Bible teacher, conference speaker from Denver, Colorado. For over 27 years he has taught the Hebrew Roots of faith to thousands all across the United States and internationally. He’s a pioneer in bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ and the Torah to all the nations of the earth. Please welcome Rabbi Messer to Paula Today.

Paula White on Rabbi Ralph Messer, 2012:

…In the past, Pastor Paula has interviewed Rabbi Messer on her television show. However, to be clear, Rabbi Messer has not been invited to participate in any service of New Destiny Christian Center or any other service with Pastor White. She has no ties or affiliation with him. She does not endorse him in any way, and she will not be participating in any events with him. Any suggestion to the contrary is totally false.

White’s announcement follows a story in the Florida Courier that Messer (background here) was planning to “enthrone” White as a “queen”, just as he recently enthroned Bishop Eddie Long by wrapping him in a Torah scroll that had supposedly been rescued from Auschwitz. That incident – during which Messer made a number of bizarre statements about the supposed meaning and symbolism of the Torah to Jews – went viral, provoking widespread comment ranging from disgust to mockery.

The Florida Courier’s evidence for its bandwagon-jumping scoop was non-existent, although readers were assured that Orlando was “abuzz with word” about an upcoming White enthronement. However, the paper now cites a claim that such a ceremony has already taken place:

On Friday, Orlando’s WEUS-AM 860 aired a live episode of “The Don Miller Show” that harshly criticized both Long and Messer. Featured guests on the show [included] Rabbi Ira Michaelson of the Beth Tefillah congregation in Clermont, just outside of Orlando.

…Michaelson said, “He actually already did this to Paula White some years ago…this was after she was divorced from Randy White and before the scandal with Benny Henn [sic] came out. He took her and rapped [sic] her in a scroll and said the same thing – ‘She’s wrapped in the Word of God.'”

…When asked directly about whether Michaelson’s charge was true, [Daniel] Beirute, Paula White’s attorney, wrote to the Florida Courier, “I don’t know where Rabbi Michaelson gets his information, but my client categorically and unequivocally denies that that ever happened.”

I originally suspected that Michaelson’s “information” was a garbled account of an appearance which Messer made with White’s ex-husband Randy in 2007. This was just after the Whites announced their intention to divorce; according to Tampa Bay Online

Messer hugged [Randy] White, telling him, “I love you. I love you so much.” White, a prayer shawl draped over his shoulders, stood clutching a Torah scroll, head bowed, with a pained expression on his face.

However, as seen in the photo above, Michaelson’s account is in fact quite correct.

UPDATE: Eddie Long is also backing away from Messer; the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

Bishop Eddie Long has apologized for last Sunday’s service at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church that drew the ire of Jewish groups and religious scholars.

“The ceremony was not my suggestion, nor was it my intent, to participate in any ritual that is offensive in any manner to the Jewish community,” Long wrote in a letter sent Saturday to Bill Nigut, Southeast Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League.

…Long “[denounced] any action that depicts me as a king, for I am merely just a servant of the  Lord.”

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The recent “enthronement” of Bishop Eddie Long by “Hebrew Roots” Rabbi Ralph Messer continues to garner journalistic fascination. The Florida Courier reports:

Orlando, Fla. is abuzz with word that Rabbi Ralph Messer is allegedly coming to New Destiny Christian Center, founded by the late Zachery Tims, to make Paula White a ‘queen’ during a Super Bowl Sunday service.

No evidence is forthcoming, but Messer is certainly known to Paula White and her ex-husband Randy – in 2007, Messer was on hand with his Torah scroll when Randy White returned to the pulpit of Without Walls International Church following the divorce announcement. On that occasion, though, White merely “clutched” a Torah scroll (according to Tampa Bay Online) – unlike Eddie Long, he wasn’t wrapped in it. There is a popular trend towards the use of Jewish devotional items in evangelical Christian worship, as I discussed here.

Messer’s links to the Whites show that Messer is more than a marginal figure, despite his eccentric religious teachings. In his presentation at Long’s church, Messer made a number of bizarre assertions that owe little to either Judaism, Christianity, or science: these have been systematically debunked by Wil Gafney, and include the claim that a Torah scroll is kept hidden from view and that only one with “great authority” is allowed to touch it; that the scroll’s cover is known as its “foreskin”; that scrolls are only given to cities “in need of anointing”; and that DNA chromosomes look like Hebrew letters. Clearly, Messer’s religion is centred around the notion that a Torah scroll  is essentially a fetish object, imbued with magical and phallic power.

However, these strange beliefs have not isolated Messer from larger religious currents: rather, he has carved an exotic niche for himself. According to his Simchat Torah Beit Midrash (STBM) website:

For more than 30 years, Rabbi Messer has facilitated inter-faith discussions between denominations, cultures, and various groups, across the country, and internationally as a popular keynote conference speaker and minister. In addition, Rabbi Messer is a frequent host on cable/satellite networks such as Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), God’s Learning Channel (GLC), and Daystar Television Network. 

Other versions of this blurb reference particular evangelists:

…STBM has ties with other international ministers including Rev. Kenneth Copeland, Pastor Paula White, and Bishop T.D. Jakes.

Messer also has links with churches in the Caribbean,and an advert posted by Messer’s organisation to Youtube urges Jamaicans to “Learn more about your Hebrew Roots”. However, this is not some kind of Black Israelite theology – these Hebrew Roots are “something greater than bloodlines”, and come from a proper understanding the Torah. This will lead to personal empowerment prosperity, “thriving and becoming the true kings and priests of this kingdom on the earth”.

Messer’s Torah-wrapping antic with Eddie Long caused particular offence because of his claims about the scroll’s provenance – he asserted that it had been rescued from Auschwitz-Birkenau (or “Auschwitz-Burkendau”, according to his pronunciation), having been thrown from one of the transport trains by Jews as they were being led in. Messer claims to “collect” such scrolls, which he  says are too valuable to be insured – a video here shows him presenting another scroll, also supposedly rescued in the same way, to Bishop Keith Butler of Word of Faith International Christian Center. According to a comment on another site:

was there when they gave him the SCROLLS. The last time I was there theey were kept in a secure case in the lobby.

The Florida Courier article carries a quote from Keith Johnson; Johnson (formerly NFL Minnesota Viking chaplain) is a United Methodist pastor who also has a interest in the Hebraic origins of Christianity, but he is scathing of Messer and of his associations with black Christians:

“Ralph Messer has been exploiting African-Americans and making a mockery of the Hebrew roots of the faith for years…” 

“For the past ten years, I have seen Messer continue to throw around Hebrew terms he does not fully understand and misuse holy objects such as Torah Scrolls to manipulate people and bring them under his authority as a “rabbi” and a supposed ‘representative of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel.'”

Johnson also accuses Messer of dishonesty, after charging a friend for Hebrew lessons that never materialised:

“I then challenged Messer to read from my Hebrew Bible and he responded by making excuses for an hour about why it was ‘dangerous’ to learn the language. I continued to insist he read from my Bible in Hebrew and with great effort, Messer managed to slowly sound out the first verse of the Bible one syllable at a time. It was obvious to everyone present that Messer did not possess the knowledge to read the Hebrew language let alone to teach it.”

Messer’s website biography gives no indication of his personal background or of how he came to be a “rabbi”. However, some purported details can be gleaned from hostile religious websites. A certain Kathryn Kern presents a convoluted backstory about a dispute within the wider “Hebrew Roots” movement, which includes the following detail:

Also, the situation of the conversions of Michael and Joyce Detwiler, their sons, Boaz and his wife, and Ralph Messer and his wife, was told to me, directly by the man that gave them their conversions, Nathan Lerer.

That a Christian would feel the need to be “converted” by Rabbi may seem rather unorthodox; however, according to Kern:

None that were converted had to deny Jesus/Yeshua/Yehoshua/Yahushua/etc., directly, since Lerer never asked.

Lerer was the subject of several critical articles in the Intermountain Jewish News in the 1990s. A later story from 1999 which references these articles has been reposted elsewhere:

Nathan and Temima Feldman came to Denver’s Orthodox Jewish community, a youthful couple professing a search for deeper, more meaningful Judaism.

…Feldman says the desire of he and his wife to become authentic Jews came despite the fact that his wife’s father, Danny Miller, leads the Congregation of the Living G-d, which, like all Messianic or Hebrew-Christian groups, is based on belief in the divinity of Jesus.

…They went through what they believed was a formal conversion to Judaism under the auspices of a man who had served as a consultant to the Congregation of the Living G-d, Nathan Lerer, Feldman says… In 1991 and 1992, the IJN ran two long investigative articles on Lerer (“Temple New Israel,” Jan. 4, 1991; “Temple New Israel includes ‘Beth Messiah,’” March 13, 1992). These investigations revealed that conversions performed by Lerer — formerly the leader of the Conservative congregation Mt. Sinai in Cheyenne and the Messianic Temple New Israel in Denver — were not recognized by Israeli or American rabbinical authorities.

The IJN also revealed that Lerer’s own ordination to the rabbinate was suspect. 

It should be noted that the IJN takes a polemical tone against alleged “missionaries”, and the claim that Lerer’s ordination was “suspect” leaves the matter dangling.

Lerer died in 2002, and his father in 2004. The IJN carried an obituary of his father:

Rabbi Samuel Lerer, who some say converted more people to Judaism than anyone in the past two centuries, has died at age 89.

…The Conservative rabbi reached out to Mexicans who believed they were descended from Spanish Jews forced to convert to Catholicism during the Inquisition.

….The rabbi’s son, Nathan Lerer, who became a familiar face and name in Colorado and Wyoming, had a similar penchant for conversion but in a considerably more controversial sense. The younger Lerer, who passed away in 2002, was accused by the regional Jewish community of improperly mixing Judaism and Christianity in his congregations and in the way he conducted conversions. He was also charged with claiming rabbinical credentials under false pretenses.

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