Bartholomew's Notes

From the Columbus Dispatch:

Christian convert Rifqa Bary is refusing chemotherapy for cancer because she believes that she was cured at a faith-healing event, according to a motion in Franklin County Juvenile Court.

Rifqa was to undergo a year of chemotherapy after her cancer was surgically removed, the document filed by her parents states. But Rifqa, who is in foster care, was taken to a faith-healing event in Youngstown a couple of weeks ago by Franklin County Children Services, without her parents’ consent, according to the document.

…It’s unclear whether she is cancer-free at the moment. The Barys’ attorney, Omar Tarazi, said in a motion that Rifqa will need a hysterectomy if the cancer returns.

The Barys want to force chemotherapy and are concerned that their daughter could die without treatment, Tarazi wrote.

Bary’s illness was announced when she was hospitalized in May; her Muslim parents’ concern was vilified by the likes of Pamela Geller as an attempt to sabotage her treatment. As I noted at the time, the neo-Pentecostal pastors around Bary have been telling her that she has a special prophetic role to play in the world, and that God has given her supernatural powers of healing. According to Charisma:

[Jamal] Jivanjee said Bary believes God has a plan for her and that she will be healed. “But she felt like she needed people to be aware and praying for her,” he told Charisma

Jivanjee announced Bary’s illness on Facebook, although from a comment left on this blog it seems that another pastor close to Bary, Brian Williams, disagreed with his decision to do so. However, Williams also followed Jivanjee’s posting with the claim that Bary had been healed. Various posters have left messages for Jivanjee on Facebook asking for an update on her health – Jivanjee has not responded to those requests, although in May he told Geller that “Chemotherapy treatments are expected in the near future”.

Bary’s lawyers are seeking to normalise her immigration status as she approaches her eighteenth birthday next week. Continued access to medical services has been given as one reason why this is urgent.

UPDATE: The AP has an update. The judge has declined to enforce medical treatment without consent; also:

A letter from Bary’s doctor recommending the 45 weeks of chemotherapy indicates she is cancer free for now according to available imaging technology, Bary’s attorney, Kort Gatterdam, told the judge.

…Rifqa Bary stopped the treatment after becoming sick and in consultation with her doctor, Gatterdam said. He disputed the faith healer allegation, saying Bary had attended a prayer conference after which she continued with surgeries and other treatment.

“Rifqa’s not saying she’ll never do the treatment again, that she’ll never do chemo,” Gatterdam said. “She’ll continue working with her doctor.”

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Here’s an interesting pattern. Back in September 2009, Tim Ireland asked Patrick Mercer to clarify the extent to which his office had worked with Glen Jenvey, part-responsible for last year’s bogus “Terror Target Sugar” story and other dubious tabloid scare stories. Tim noted:

Meanwhile, Mercer is telling people who are asking questions about this that I am an “electronic stalker”.

Move forward to summer 2010, and Mercer is enduring some bad publicity over an extra-marital affair and some money he is alleged to owe his ex-lover. His response? Mail diarist Richard Kay reports:

Tory MP Patrick Mercer tells me he has been issued with a personal alarm system by the police to help him avoid any unwelcome approaches by his thwarted ex-lover, Commons secretary Sarah Coyle.

…While the dust settles, Mercer is off to Afghanistan to research his third novel… ‘I think I’ll be safer in Helmand Province than here,’ he quips.

That would be the same Patrick Mercer MP who has been known to opine about our “our overstretched police and security services”.

Mercer’s affair became public knowledge after Coyle berated him in a corridor at their shared workplace, but there are no reports that she has been acting in a way that would necessitate the ex-soldier running to the police for an alarm system. And if there is a genuine Fatal Attraction-type reason for him to have such a thing, he should surely feel some remorse for his part in reducing someone to such a state and either discuss the matter with due seriousness or – better – not at all. A suggestive quip to a diarist simply leaves the impression that he is playing the media to smear (and damage the career of) a woman he’s already let down.

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Charisma reports on Pastor John Hagee’s latest Christians United for Israel (CUFI) Washington Summit:

Participants said one of the most moving aspects of the summit was an art exhibit remembering the Holocaust created by students from the K-12 Christian school run by Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, N.C. The poignant paintings, drawings and sculptures captured not only the horror of the Holocaust but also the hope of Israel’s restoration, [CUFI Executive Director David] Brog said…

“What they produced is simply amazing,” Brog said. “Even students who have never really been artists [and] know very little about art produced such stunning works, works that reveal such a love of the Jewish people and such an appreciation of the horrors of the Holocaust and such a celebration of the renewal of Israel. Everyone who went there, including Holocaust survivors, were deeply, deeply touched.”

The exhibition also featured at a CUFI event in Charlotte last year.

Word of Faith’s website includes a section on its “Holocaust Project” and an associated “Museum“. The church has a whole team of pastors, although the most senior are Sam and Jane Whaley; in relation to the Charlotte event, CUFI in particular thanked

Leigh Valentine for bringing the Holocaust expressions…

A 2006 report in the North Carolina Daily Courier has some interesting background:

Valentine’s name was first associated with the WOFF back in the mid­ 1990s when she was mar­ried to televangelist Robert Tilton. In February 1995, T­he D­aily C­ourier published its first set of stories about the practices of the controversial church some call a cult.

Valentine and Tilton are mentioned in one of the first stories. Tilton trav­eled to Spindale and cred­ited Sam and Jane Whaley with saving his life through a blasting, or demon exorcising, experi­ence.

Tilton had recently been discredited through a series of media reports questioning the legitimacy of his ministry. He and Valentine later when through a contentious divorce.

Tilton is now remembered for cheesy TV shows that are almost self-parodies of televangelism; clips are widely available on YouTube, although many of these have alas been edited by scoffers who have added flatulence sound effects to create a popular series known as “the Farting Preacher”. WOFF leadership were listed as creditors in a cosmetics business run by Valentine which failed in 2006, leading to the Courier report; Valentine does not appear to have given an impressive performance in the bankruptcy court.

As the name suggests, WOFF is related to Kenneth Hagin’s “Prosperity Gospel” Word Faith movement, and the Whaleys have links with the Swedish Prosperity Gospel megachurch Livets Ord (a church which I mentioned previously in a blog entry here). However, the notion of exorcism through “blasting” is Jane Whaley’s original idea – and it has led to serious controversy. The church was the subject of a journalistic exposé in 1995, a follow-up to which can be seen below; the technique involves shouting and screaming at people to force the demons to leave them, and it was alleged that young children were subjected to this treatment, and to corporal punishment.

Further bad publicity came as the result of child custody cases involving church members; a 2003 Courier report states that the DSS regarded the church as an “abusive environment”.

Jane Whaley was interviewed by sociologist Michael W. Cuneo for his book American Exorcism (2001); Whaley told him that everyone is afflicted by demons and requires multiple exorcisms, including herself. She also clarified that it was not a “screaming” ministry; rather, the emphasis is on “wailing, groaning, and travailing” (p. 235). Cuneo also notes that WOFF has anti-Catholic views;  John Hagee also has an anti-Catholic record, although when this became controversial he backed away from his stance.

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An interesting tale of globalization, from the Anglican church of St Peter and St Paul in St Leonards-on-Sea on the south coast of England; the Independent (among others) reports:

A jury at Lewes Crown Court decided that Vladymyr Buchak, a Ukrainian national, Michael Adelasoye, a Nigeria-born solicitor, and the Anglican vicar Alex Brown were all guilty of conspiring to breach Britain’s immigration laws by organising hundreds of bogus weddings.

In the unremarkable church, hundreds of West Africans tied the knot with impoverished local Eastern Europeans who were paid up to £3,000 to be a bride or husband for the day.

[Buchak] targeted vulnerable Eastern Europeans who were struggling to make ends meet… The West Africans entered the scam through Adelasoye, a 50-year-old immigration solicitor who lived locally and preached at the Ark of Hope evangelical church in Hastings.

…[Brown’s] parish, a predominantly white area to the west of Hastings, had suddenly become one of most cosmopolitan corners of the South East, with 90 mixed race couples marrying from one road alone.

Brown’s motives remain a mystery: was he “grasping” for cash (the Sun) and “preying” on “desperate” East Europeans (as the prosecutor claimed)? Did he feel sorry for Africans facing deportation and decide to break the law to assist their efforts to remain in the UK? Or was he, as he suggested in his own defence, simply overwhelmed by a situation he found himself in?

…”I’m not trained in immigration law. I can say that now looking in hindsight.”

Earlier, he told the court he felt pressured by the “constant train” of foreign nationals coming to him wanting to get married and would lead to him drinking up to three pints of cider an evening, but he denied touching spirits.

He said: “It was the pressure of work and the constant harassment of applicants.

“They didn’t want to wait for a marriage. They wanted it the next day or the next week.”

However, Brown made some efforts to conceal the number of weddings he was performing; according to the Daily Mail, he

…also became the only vicar in 800 years to be convicted of failing to read out the banns – asking the congregation if they knew of ‘any just cause or impediment’ why two people may not marry.

Less attention has been paid to Pastor Michael Adelasoye, although the Hastings and St Leonards Observer profiled him a few weeks ago:

Michael Adelasoye, 50… was once employed by Hastings Borough Council as a community cohesion officer as the town struggled to adapt to the influx of immigrants.

“…There were Tutsis living with Hutus, and Christians living with Muslims, which caused a lot of problems.”

As for his own background:

… He told the jury he was raised a Muslim, but converted to Christianity shortly after moving to the UK in 1978.

After getting a degree in community law, he moved to Hastings in 2001 working for a legal firm in Eastbourne before setting up the Ark of Hope Chambers…

He was involved in one high-profile case in 2007, when he assisted twin Jewish Kyrgyz refugees to remain in Birmingham.

His firm has a website here, and his associated Ark of Hope charity and Ark of Hope Christian Centre has a site here. The remains of an older site can be glimpsed on Google cache; there was a link to an “evangelistic poem” called “The Court Date”, although I couldn’t access it. According to this site, the church used to an Elim Pentecostal church, although it now seems to be independent. The church also has a Facebook page and a YouTube channel; there are other pastors involved, including a non-African. The church also has an associated “Saturday Street Evangelism” mission; according to its website “The counter to the side is ticking off the number of people who have died since you opened this. The vast majority of those people are entering Hell.” That’s typical “street-preacher” fare anywhere (see here), although the grim emphasis on hellfire is somewhat at odds with the Ark of Hope’s more upbeat image.

As for Buchak, the Independent reports that he had been “thrown out of Sweden for marijuana use and had entered the UK illegally using false identity”, and was posing as a Latvian. Various reports add the detail that he also worked in “a sausage factory in Bexhill”, and this was where he found some of the Eastern Europeans to take part in the weddings.

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Karl Rove needs no introduction; Grant Jeffrey, by contrast, will perhaps be unknown to most people who don’t consume Christian fundamentalist apocalyptic paperbacks and DVDs. Rachel Tabachnick, who discusses the above event at Talk to Action here (which brought it to my attention), notes that Jeffrey is the author of works such Shadow Government: How the Global Elite Plan to Destroy your Democracy and Freedom. According to the DVD’s blurb:

What if there were hidden forces with no ties to democracy or constitutional rights in power? What if new laws, media propaganda and Secret Societies labeled John a danger to society? And what if all this set the stage for a Biblically prophesied global government run by the Antichrist?

Leading researchers, authors and minds like Grant Jeffrey… take you through the incredible and hidden world of Surveillance, Rights and Freedoms, Global Government and Bible Prophecy.

Books by Jeffrey include The New Temple and the Second Coming: The Prophecy That Points to Christ’s Return in Your Generation (“Grant Jeffrey investigates… developments among rabbinic authorities to reveal a prophetic, Temple-related timeline that points to Jesus’ return in the current generation”), as well as The Signature of God: Astonishing Bible Codes Reveal September 11 Terror Attacks (“Remarkable new computer discoveries from the Bible Codes reveal astonishing details about the September 11 Islamic terrorist attack on America that were encoded in Hebrew text thousands of years ago”) and The Next World War: What Prophecy Reveals about Extreme Islam and the West (“How Russia and extreme Islam will launch World War III”). Walid Shoebat used to credit his conversion to Christianity to Jeffrey’s Armageddon: Appointment With Destiny, although he tends to downplay that these days.

The site for the “G-20 Summit Faith and Business Leaders” event – which had no links to the real G-20 meeting, as a tiny notice on the site makes clear – includes a blurb by Canadian Christian Right bigwig Charles McVety:

As you know the G-20 World Leaders are coming to Toronto, June 25 – 27. On Saturday evening, June 26th we are going to gather in praise and prayer to petition God to guide these leaders toward peace and freedom.

… The world is fraught with peril today. Countries such as Greece are already bankrupt and cannot pay their employees. Spain is in deep trouble financially and the United States owes over $13 Trillion. Canada is going deeper in debt every day as our government wastes billions of dollars on needless projects. Our environment deteriorates as pollution grows while the G-20 throws trillions of dollars at reducing CO2, a natural necessary part of air. War in the Middle East could break out any day with President Ahmadinejad of Iran building nuclear weapons and threatening to “wipe Israel off the map”.

With these leaders down the street in our city of Toronto we have an ideal opportunity to pray for them.

Dr. Paul Dhinakaran will lead us to the Throne of Grace for such a time as this. He has one of the largest ministries in the world and is a world leader in prayer receiving over 20,000 prayer requests per day. His prayer rallies average over 500,000 people per night. God has spoken to Dr. Paul giving him a special impartation for us in these days.

Please try to clear you busy schedule and be with us on Saturday, June 26th at 7:00pm Admission is free. This is part of a larger G-20 Summit for Faith and Business Leaders. Karl Rove will speak to us on how to effect change democratically. Dr. Grant Jeffrey will teach us history and prophecy and several other speakers will prepare us for these days. On Sunday evening we will gather for a Rally to Stop Nuclear Iran.

The swipe at “reducing CO2” is typical for apocalyptic Christian fundamentalism: while the movement as a whole manipulates uncertainties about the future (wars, diseases, earthquakes, and such) to instil fatalism, fear, and hate, wider political considerations mean that climate change has to be dismissed out of hand. McVety, as Rachel notes, is close to John Hagee and co-chairs the Canadian branch of CUFI (Christians United for Israel); she also notes this 2006 Walrus article which explains McVety’s role in the Canadian Christian Right.

Dhinakaran is an Indian Pentecostal evangelist and the son of D.G.S. Dhinakaran, from whom he inherited his “Jesus Calls” ministry. According to his ministry’s publicity materials, D.G.S. enjoyed an international reputation:

Great servants of God, like Pastor.Benny Hinn, Dr.Pat Robertson, Dr.Dave Roberson, Pastor.John Osteen honour Dr.D.G.S.Dhinakaran as the apostle of this age in India.

…Dr. M.G. “Pat” Robertson, Chairman of The Christian Broadcasting Network, USA has decribed the spiritual nature of Bro. Dhinakaran very aptly in the following few lines: ” Frankly, I cannot recall any figure in the Old Testament or New Testament who has had such a profound and ongoing encounter with the Deity. ”

As for Paul’s own profile:

A man who frequently rubs shoulders with eminent leaders of the nation, Dr. Paul was appointed by the present Prime Minister of India as a Member of the National Monitoring Committee for Minority Education and as a Member of the Governing Council of “Education for all” Committee, both in the Education department of the Government of India. He had also served as a Syndicate Member of the Bharathiar University for two consecutive terms appointed by the Governor of the State of Tamilnadu.

…As a visionary, he revolutionized the “Jesus Calls” ministry in several ways. He was instrumental in establishing Jesus Calls “Prayer Towers” throughout the globe in 7 countries and all over India where Prayer Intercessors offer dedicated prayers all the 24 hours for thousands of people daily.

This link between prayer, geography, and spiritual warfare is suggestive of C. Peter Wagner’s teachings.

Karl Rove, of course, does not take any of this very seriously – in 2008 Christopher Hitchens mentioned that Rove does not consider himself to be “a person of faith”, although when a Christianity Today journalist asked Rove about it he affected to some sort of vague religiosity. But if he wants to cement his links with this crowd, perhaps he could include one of Jeffrey’s books in his new book club, once he has done with Brad Thor‘s latest potboiler. There are plenty to choose from…

Various organisations are listed as suppporting the “Faith and Business Leaders” event, with their logos next to the image of Jeffrey. They are: Canada Family Action; Conservative Values of Canada; McVety’s Insitute for Canadian Values (founded in 2005 with “a gala dinner tutorial from Ralph Reed”); and – somewhat more surprisingly – the B’nai Brith Canada.

Rachel notes that B’nai Brith Canada’s executive vice-president Frank Dimant also spoke at the event. Dimant has long-standing links to McVety; in 2003 McVety joined Dimant in denouncing Jews for Jesus for “preaching Christianity under the guise of Judaism”. Dimant also teaches at McVety’s Canada Christian College, where the “Faith and Business Leaders” summit took place.

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That act from pastors pointing the fingers, pronouncing in front of the congregation that the child is a witch, we are pressing for that to be recognised as abuse. Because emotional abuse starts from that point.

That’s a quote from Romain Matondo of the Congolese Family Centre in London, speaking on tonight’s Channel 4 Dispatches documentary on “Britain’s witch-children”, and the programme gives plenty of reasons to take the suggestion seriously. The problem of children being accused of witchcraft in certain African churches in the UK has been hughlighted before, and it played a role in the notorious murder of Victoria Climbié in 2000. There was also a BBC documentary in 2006, which I blogged here. However, the new programme tells us that “the practice of branding children as witches has quietly continued”, and according to Debbie Ariyo of Africans Unite Against Child Abuse, only “the tip of the iceberg” has come to light.

The programme explores several churches where child “deliverance” takes place, using undercover footage. A young  journalist named Juliana Oladipo agreed to pose as a difficult teenager being brought to church by her mother; in each case witchcraft is diagnosed as the problem, and aggressive exorcism prescribed as the cure.

First, they go to the Tower of Refuge Ministry in Tottenham, where Pastor Godwin Obed performs deliverance; the second church featured is the Faith and Victory Church, run by a certain Pastor Mwembe Morea (not sure about spelling). Morea explains that in 2005 he met a 12-year-old girl who told him that

she’s a great queen in the kingdom of darkness. She stated that she is a witch and she had a mission to kill her step-mum.

Morea also teaches that children can become infected with witchcraft by eating poisoned food, and that they fly on sticks and umbrellas. However, Morea is also a sexual predator, and there is an interview with a young woman named Kay. Kay’s father was suffering from kidney failure, and Morea explained to her that it was because she was a witch. The cure? Sex with Morea, 21 times.

Next, we meet someone I’ve blogged about several times before now: Kenyan “Archbishop” Gilbert Deya, who astonishingly has still not been extradited to Kenya for his part in the tragic “miracle babies” scam. I noted his obsession with witches back in 2004, and his teaching on the subject:

With my experience of witches who killed my brother Wilson in 1979, I know how dangerous they are. They can destroy families and wipe out generations. Many people have suffered because their ignorance of witches and witchcraft. The witches have been destroying some Christians, destroying their marriages, jobs, peace in the family and killing people with incurable diseases.

According to Dispatches, he still has 34,000 followers, and his ministry is the fastest-growing in the UK. At Deya’s church, a woman pastor tells the congregation that witches need human blood to perform rituals. To get the blood, they

set up accidents at junctions, they set up women in hospitals.

Witches can be found “all over the place” causing misfortune, and another pastor at the church urges members to donate £700:

You can afford it, the devil has been killing your family members

Oladipo is brought before a certain Pastor James, who explains that a person can be contaminated by witchcraft by any kind of contact, including through the phone. He asks for a donation in order to “deliver” her – he doesn’t give a fee, although suggests £1,000, and recalls that in one case £12,000 was donated just for a chat. The undercover journalists hand over £170 – this is enough for a “deliverance” session, although the pastor takes a call on his mobile phone while conducting the ceremony. The programme also shows scenes of a general deliverance session at the church, including children looking obviously frightened and upset.

The programme also details the Church of Christ in Mission, led by a certain Dieudonné Tukala. A woman named Fifi Mayingi explained that she had been abused and abandoned by her husband after Tukala told him that she and their children were witches; the husband then killed himself out of guilt. Tukala tells the woman posing as Oladipo’s mother that someone blew on her head while she was on holiday in Nigeria, and this has contaminated her with witchcraft.

The experience of her various deliverances is something of an eye-opener for Oladipo, who is dismayed that “nobody’s speaking out”. However, she also acknowledges that there is a great fear and reluctance to challenge the authority of a “man of God”.

Of course, the programme had its limitations: something could have been said about the churches and pastors who have put in place child protection measures, and it should be remembered that the manipulation of spiritual fears in order to abuse is also known in other contexts (see Roland Howard’s book Charismania for some examples).

The Independent newspaper has an article to accompany the programme, with a quote from Joe Aldred:

There are more than 4,000 African churches in Britain, serving half a million people. “At the moment you can set up a church anywhere, any time … in the same way we wouldn’t tolerate somebody setting themselves up as a lawyer or surgeon without proper training and regulation, we shouldn’t expose the souls of people to anybody who happens to think they can set up a church,” said Bishop Dr Joe Aldred, secretry of minority ethnic Christian affairs at Churches Together in England.

The problem with Aldred’s solution is that such regulation would be impossible to enforce: far better simply to firm up the law to recognise witch-accusations as abusive and as incitement to abuse – and for church leaders with standing in the African community to speak out firmly against the pastors stigmatising children as witches. In 2007, the Evangelical Alliance issued a statement:

The Evangelical Alliance unreservedly condemns all forms of child abuse, and considers any accusation of witchcraft levelled at a child to be abusive, immoral and unbiblical.

This is in line with our previous statements on this issue, and we strongly contest any suggestions that the activities of Pastor Dieudonne Tukala are associated more broadly with black African evangelical churches, or that this is part of a growing church trend.

…”The African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance has been working with black majority churches to address the issue, and has developed model child protection policies for their use.

“Since the Climbie enquiry, we have ensured that our member churches and organisations demonstrate a clear commitment to child safety.”

ACEA is also continuing pro-active multi-agency work with organisations including Churches Together in England, the Churches Child Protection Advisory Service, African anti-child abuse organisation AFRUCA, DfES and NSPCC on this issue…

Excellent sentiments, but clearly a more proactive strategy is needed. Pastors in the UK or abroad who stigmatise children as witches need to be rebuked and rejected by their peers, and efforts should be undertaken to educate churchgoers about the subject. It would be nice not to have to still be blogging about this subject in another four years.

Clicking the logo below would be a start…

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Channel 4 Dispatches is tonight broadcasting a documentary on child-witch accusations in churches in the UK (8pm, or 9pm on Channel 4+1). From the blurb:

Dispatches goes undercover in some African churches in the UK, where evangelical pastors perpetuate a strong belief in witchcraft. They preach that some people are possessed by evil spirits, and that these spirits bring bad luck into the lives of others.

The only way to rid the possessed from the witchcraft spell and lift their curse is to ‘deliver’ them: a kind of exorcism that can be very traumatic. Some pastors charge significant sums of money to perform these deliverances.

Often it is children who are denounced as witches by these pastors, and this labelling can lead to the physical and emotional abuse of those children at the hands of their families. In extreme cases it has led to the deaths of some children.

In parts of Africa, branding a child a witch is now outlawed, but in Britain this practise is perfectly legal, despite the fact it can have horrific consequences.

Dispatches reveals just what goes on behind closed doors in these African churches, exposing the pastors who exploit the religious beliefs of the most vulnerable.

This comes in the wake of two Dispatches documentaries on child-witch stigmatisation in Nigeria (see here and here; the first was also shown in the USA in May). However, the UK context also got some attention in a BBC documentary in 2006, which I blogged on here. That programme concentrated on churches with links to Congo.

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A follow-up to a subject I blogged in March; the Trinidad Express Newspaper reports:

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar is questioning whether the “lifestyle” of Rev Julia Pena [var. Juliana Pena] was financed under the People’s National Movement (PNM) administration.

Speaking to supporters at a campaign meeting in Penal on Thursday night, Persad-Bissessar said, “I want to ask Dr (Keith) Rowley whether State funds were being used to finance the lifestyle of Mrs Pena.”

…Pena is the spiritual adviser to former prime minister Patrick Manning.

Persad-Bissessar also said no permission was granted by Town and Country Planning to construct Pena’s controversial $30 million Lighthouse of the Lord Jesus Christ Church at the Heights of Guanapo, Arima.

The local Guardian adds:

The “disappearance” of Manning’s spiritual adviser was also played out on the political platform as Persad-Bissessar revealed her immigration records which showed of numerous visits to Venezuela, the latest being on February 6, 2010.

While Newsday tells us that

Police sources said they have an address in Africa for Pena and are making arrangements to interview her by next week.

The police are also wanting to speak to a man named Calder Hart, the Canadian former chairman of  a construction firm called UDeCOTT, in relation to this and other matters. According to another report:

WHILE his company was at work on billion-dollar Udecott projects, Michael Zhang, managing director of Chinese firm SCG International (Trinidad and Tobago), received a private cut out of the work at the Ministry of Legal Affairs project in Port-of-Spain from Sunway Construction Caribbean Limited, the controversial Malaysian company now under police probe for alleged links to former Udecott chairman Calder Hart.

Sub-contracts from Sunway went both to SCG and to another company run by Zhang; the church was among those given to SCG, which is reportedly owned by the Chinese government. Zhang, however, has no comment, while Hart has left the country, either for Miami or the UK.

Meanwhile, the original owners of the site given to the church have returned:

Zeena and Steve Lopez, both 52, for the first time yesterday, were able to walk on the land after they were “evicted” by “policemen” dressed in black, who handed them a bag containing $50,000 and ordered them off the property.

Steve recounted that he lost thousands of dollars in plantain, dasheen, cassava, breadfruit and other vegetables he planted around his wooden home…

The construction of the church was abandoned when Manning lost the election, and the site is now prey to looters:

One man felt the looting stemmed from the view the church was linked to the PNM Government. Martin Fermin held strongly to that view.

Fermin and other members of the congregation said they were saddened at the destruction… Fermin said he was further aggrieved that members of the Christian faith were not speaking out on behalf of the church.

…His sentiments were echoed by others, including evangelist Shirlain Fermin and prophetess Cindy Blanc. Fermin said she had to warn “those evil-doers that destruction will come upon their households.” Blanc, who replaced Juliana Pena as the prophetess, said: “Since I saw what was going on there, I have been crying.”

Blanc also claims that most of the looters are “Rastamen”.

Manning’s association with Pena was criticised by Benny Hinn in 2007:

…”Years ago I was in Trinidad…this man was sitting on the platform and I said… you will be the next Prime Minister and he is till now. I was in his (Manning) office a few months ago… he brought with him a very foolish woman who called herself a prophetess.

…”He (Manning) said I want her to pray for you and give her the word, I take her with me everywhere he said (Manning).

“God speaks to me through her. She has been a great blessing to the Government. I’m thinking you foolish man.”

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Instaputz notes:

…check out today’s New York Daily News, which reports that NATO blames Mullah Omar for the mortaring of civilians this week. Last month, Omar “instructed his commanders to capture and kill any Afghan supporting or working for coalition forces.”

The fact that Omar was roaming freely in June and coordinating attacks must be an awful shock to readers of Breitbart’s Big Government.

Back in May, Instaputz reminds us, Andrew Breitbart’s site was the focus of considerable attention when it announced that Mullah Omar had been arrested in Pakistan. The source was thriller writer Brad Thor, who supposedly has contacts from Afghanistan, and there was much crowing over how the site had scooped the mainstream media. The story provoked lots of debate, and not just along liberal versus conservative lines: Jeremy Scahill at the Nation tentatively suggested that there might be something in it, while David Horowitz’s Newsrealblog was not impressed. Doubters, however, were mocked when Oliver North supposedly confirmed the story. Two and a half months on, though, no evidence has leaked out, and statements from NATO and Pakistan all suggest that the Mullah is still at large.

Thor, whom I previously blogged here, has recently provided a blurb (alongside Geert Wilders) for Pamela Geller’s new book about how Obama is a Communist; Thor makes a point of referencing Obama’s middle name in his endorsement.

And while we’re on the subject of Breitbart, here’s his famous confrontation with Max Blumenthal at CPAC (5:38 0nwards) in the wake of this article. Breitbart admonishes Max that unfairly “accusing a person of racism is the worst thing that you can do”:

(A couple of other cross-references: Blumenthal has also clashed with Geller, as I blogged here; the above video also features Hannah Giles, who is now more famous than her father, whom I used to blog about way back)

(Hat tip: Media Matters)

UPDATE: Thor responds, remarkably refering to this blog directly:

So, based on Bartholomew and Media Matters, who both picked up the meme from something called Instaputz, we’re to believe that Omar is not only free, but that he has done a complete 180 from eleven months ago and now doesn’t care how many Afghans get splashed?  In fact, he’s actively encouraging the Taliban to toss out last summer’s “Code of Conduct” and slaughter them?  I guess with Instaputz, Bartholomew, and Media Matters on the scene, the rest of the milblogging community can finally hang up their cleats.  The cavalry has arrived!

What’s truly laughable isn’t that these bloggers (with no apparent military, intelligence, COIN, PsyOps or I.O. knowledge) are suddenly blogging about these issues, but that the left is so desperate to smear Breitbart that they’ll now cite the same brave military they so despise and distrust as proof that they’re right.

I have said it before and I will say it here again.  Mullah Omar is in Pakistani custody.  You can take it to the bank.  Don’t believe me?  See the growing list below (which none of the three bloggers above fully cited).  Lefty journalism is only fun after all when you can selectively attack sources.  Behold the utter nihilism of the left – available at a progressive website near you.

This is bluster, although it’s nice to see my somewhat obscure blog being bracketed with Media Matters, and fun to see it cited by a best-selling author, even though I don’t care for his view of the world (that must be my “utter nihilism”, I suppose). Of course I don’t “despise” the military and I’ve never written anything which suggests I do. And I’m happy to concede that it’s possible that Omar has been captured and that the letter is a fake; I certainly don’t know anything more about Mullah Omar’s whereabouts or circumstances than any other member of the general public – and neither does Instaputz: the point is the information from NATO via the NY Daily News, not how many bloggers are commenting on it or their political perspectives.

But, as I wrote above, it’s now nearly three months since Thor’s original post, and if the story is accurate, it is extraordinary that no details have leaked out and that the only named person on record as having heard about it from a first hand source is a conservative thriller writer with links to virulent anti-Islam activists like Pamela Geller. My lack of “military, intelligence, COIN, PsyOps or I.O. knowledge” and Thor’s self-proclaimed expertise in such matters is neither here nor there.

Also, no-one is currently “desperate to smear Breitbart”: over the past week the man has destroyed his own credibility with very little assistance from critics.

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The Sowetan reports on a television documentary airing in South Africa about witchcraft accusations, entitled Troubled Souls and part of a strand called Special Assignment. According to the programme’s website:

Witchcraft accusations are still rife in South Africa, but something must be quite worrying when these are increasingly driven by the church.

A further blurb adds:

This week’s Special Assignment investigates two churches in Limpopo, which proudly claim that children can also be demon possessed and be used in witchcraft activities. In some instances, teenagers themselves do say that they used to fly on planes and go through windows as part of their witchcraft activities. How damaging can this be to children and are these churches a law unto themselves?

According to the Sowetan, the programme claims that certain churches are “widely distributing recorded confessions on witchcraft made by children.” In particular, the report mentions “the New Generation Church in Lenting village”, which

…provides shelter to adults and children, many of whom are ill.

The founder and leader of the church, Pastor Bertha Mphahlele, says she wants to deliver people, including children, who are bound by evil spirits.

The church has a basic website here; although it mentions “evil spirits” and “deliverance”, the emphasis appears to be on practical assistance, and there is no mention of witches. The pastor – also known as “Pastor M.B. Mphahlele” – does not appear to have links with any other church.

Confessions of witchcraft by children are considered in the recent UNICEF report which I blogged on yesterday; in 2008 I blogged on a Presbyterian pastor in Cameroon who gets teenage girls to confess to causing disasters through witchcraft, and I noted a case from Nigeria last year.

(Hat tip: Bulldada Newsblog)

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