Bartholomew's Notes

The Kampala New Vision gives details of a speech given by Uganda President Yoweri Museveni at the consecration of Patrick Gidudu as the new bishop of Mbale Diocese.

“I salute the Archbishop and bishops of Africa for resisting disorientation and a decadent culture, which he said was being passed by Western nations.”

Describing homosexuality as mtumbavu (Swahili for stupid), the President said: “Don’t fear, resist and do not compromise on that. It is a danger not only to the believers but to the whole of Africa. It is bad if our children become complacent and think that people who are not in order are alright…These foreigners should go and practice their nonsense elsewhere. That is the minimum demand.”

Further:

“When I learnt that the bishop was being consecrated I thought of shoes for the bishop. Since walking is now outdated, I thought I should give him a car, which is parked outside,” he said as he handed the keys to the bishop, prompting cheers from the fully packed church.

It is not clear whether this was a personal donation cast from Museveni’s own abundance, or whether Ugandan taxpayers had shelled out. Gidudu was consecrated by Archbishop Patrick Orombi, who, according to a recent report, says “he fears for his life because of the campaign he has waged against homosexuals”.

The situation for gays and lesbians in Uganda is bleak, as I have blogged in the past: as well as the practice being illegal, religious rallies and government officials have called for media censorship against any pro-gay statements. One Ugandan lesbian is seeking asylum in the UK after allegedly being raped by police (VirtueOnline mocked a journalist who raised this at GAFCON as “whiny”), and Human Rights Watch reported just a few weeks ago on a gay-rights activist being tortured in police custody:

The abduction and torture of a Ugandan HIV/AIDS activist who faces trial for holding a peaceful protest reveals the danger to those who challenge the government’s policies, Human Rights Watch, and the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders said today.

…Police arrested Usaam “Auf” Mukwaya, Onziema Patience, and Valentine Kalende on June 4 after a peaceful protest at the 2008 “HIV/AIDS Implementers Meeting” in Kampala against the government’s lack of response to HIV/AIDS among the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities. The three human rights defenders were charged with criminal trespass and freed on bail on June.

On July 25, a few hours after a hearing in the case, Kampala policemen abducted Auf, as he is known to his friends, on his way back to the Speke Hotel.

…According to Auf, three police officers (one man and two women) pushed him through a dark corridor into a room where they made him sit on a chair. Auf saw four other men around his age in the room. One had a broken leg and the other three appeared to have been beaten. One of the women officers scraped his knuckles with a razor-like object; later, the man tied him to a machine that stretched his arms. At dawn, before releasing him, they forced him to strip to his underwear, asked him if he was a man or a woman, and made him walk around the room in his underwear. The following day, they dropped him at Mulago round-about in central Kampala. Auf told Human Rights Watch that he could identify his attackers if he saw them again.  

One American who has reportedly backed Museveni’s crack-down is Rick Warren, the media-savvy and “safe” Christian right leader whom Barak Obama and John McCain were recently so keen to be seen with after their Jeremiah Wright and John Hagee fiascos. According to a March report in the Kampala Monitor, Warren had

said that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right. “We shall not tolerate this aspect at all,” Dr Warren said.

The bishop’s consecration seems to have been an excuse for various Ugandan politicians to grandstand:

Dr. Kizza Besigye, the head of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and Miria Obote of the Uganda People’s Congress also attended. When the President entered the church, the congregation stood up except Nandala Mafabi (FDC) and Besigye who walked out shortly after amid murmurs.

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An interesting Diary piece by Hugh Muir in the Guardian:

Back with discomforting news about discord within the Swinton Circle, the group that inhabits the murky ground between the crazies on the far right and the outer reaches of David Cameron’s Conservative party…There was, it seems, a furore about the alleged infiltration of the meeting and of the group itself by NF/BNP types who only serve to lower the tone. Bad blood between Alan Harvey, the London chair, and Gregory Lauder-Frost, the former political secretary of the Monday Club, appeared to sour everything – reflecting what one web poster described as “scenes more redolent of a bear garden than a meeting of a respected Conservative organisation”…

Both Harvey and Lauder-Frost have appeared on this blog in the past: Harvey is a former National Front (NF) activist who used to edit SA [i.e. South Africa] Patriot magazine, and he maintains that examples of racism in the magazine only slipped through because he didn’t realise what they meant. As well as chairing the Swinton Circle, he also runs the Springbok Club, which agitates for a return for imperialist rule over Africa. As I noted last year, the Club came under journalistic scrutiny when journalist Johann Hari noted in the New Republic that right-wing historian Andrew Roberts had spoken to the group (Roberts, inevitably, made noises about “libel”). Harvey also has links with WorldNetDaily‘s South African correspondent, Anthony LoBaido.

Lauder-Frost has also been involved in a number of groups: in the mid-1980s he helped to found the British branch of Western Goals (see here), which had links with the World Anti-Communist League and with the John Birch Society. After the demise of the US parent organisation in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal, this British branch became the Western Goals Institute, and it became increasingly controversial, forging links with Jean-Marie Le Pen and with Clive Derby-Lewis of the Conservative Party of South Africa. More recently, Lauder-Frost took part in the Right Now! conferences held at the Mark Masons’ Hall in central London; Searchlight reported in December 2006 that

The usual suspects were there in force. They included Allan Robertson (London Swinton Circle), Gregory Lauder-Frost (Traditional Britain Group)…[and] Dr Sean Gabb (Libertarian Alliance)…There was a large British National Party contingent too, numbering around 20. (1)

The British National Party attendees included the absurd Rev. Robert West, whom I blogged here. One BNP member

…sat in from his colleagues nestled between Mike Smith of the Conservative Democratic Alliance (CDA) and Right Now! columnist Robert Henderson…

Many delegates were extremely well disposed to the BNP contingent, who in turn were clearly delighted to be hobnobbing with figures such as Gregory Lauder-Frost and an array of individuals from the Freedom Association and UKIP, all of whom knew exactly whom they were talking to.

Mike Smith is better-known as Mike Keith-Smith, and he was the victor in a 2006 libel case which I blogged here. He shares Lauder-Frost’s enmity towards Harvey, which he expresses on a discussion site:

Personally I don’t see this as seriously damaging the Tories but Harvey is a loose cannon. If I were Cameron I would expel him.

Lauder-Frost adds:

Not being a Guardian reader I did not see that article. But it should be on record that I said nothing at that meeting. Absolutely nothing. My behaviour was impeccable.

It is certainly wise to be as accurate as possible when writing about these kinds of groups; discussing one blog which had written something negative about Lauder-Frost, Keith-Smith warned that if the site concerned ever mentioned him he would “leave them without a pot to piss in.”

(1) David Williams, “Right Here, Right Now!“, in Searchlight, Dec 2006 pp. 14-15.

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From the Botswana Sunday Standard:

Deported Zimbabwean priest, Edmore Chaka, is suspected to have used his church, Abundant Life Ministries, in a racket to rob HIV Batswana of their ARV medication and sell it on Zimbabwe black market.Police started investigating Chaka after a number of his followers who were HIV positive died after he told them to surrender their ARV drugs to him and, instead, use the suspicious concoction that he sold to them. It has not been established where Chaka took the ARV drugs that his followers surrendered. It is, however, suspected that he sold them in the Zimbabwe black-market where they are on high demand…

Chaka was deported alongside Pastor Chris Chissana, who was allegedly running an unregistered branch of the Christ Embassy (a Nigerian church, which I blogged here), and none other than Caesar Zvayi, former editor of the Zimbabwe Herald and notorious pro-Robert Mugabe hack (see here). Zvayi has now written an account of his “ordeal”, in typical form:

…the campaign was directed to the House of Chiefs, of which Ian Khama (Khama IV) is a member, having descended from Khama III, one of the Kgosi (chiefs), who along with two others — Bathoen 1 and Sebele 1 — approached the Queen of England, Queen Victoria, in October 1895, to ask for protection from Boer encroachment as other African countries selflessly fought colonialism in the region.

The trio’s actions saw Botswana become a British protectorate sworn to the politics of Western appeasement, and the trio venerated as Batswana heroes to this day.

Zvayi claims that one of the pastors was in fact deported because “opposition BNF members” attended his church.

Zvayi’s account has some differences from other reports: “Edmore Chaka” has become “Edmore Chijena”, and he, rather than Chissana, is named as running a “Christ Embassy” church.

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Joseph Farah in WorldNetDaily, April:

My friend Michael Savage is [suing the Council on American-Islamic Relations] and I commend him for it. But I know the sacrifice he is making by getting down into the gutter with these people. I would urge you to contribute to his legal defense fund so he can pursue his lawsuit against CAIR for as long as it takes to win.

The San Francisco Chronicle, August:

Conservative talk show host Michael Savage has changed his mind and is reluctantly dropping his lawsuit against an Islamic rights group that launched an advertisers’ boycott after he attacked Islam and the Quran on the air, his lawyer said Thursday…In an unusual court filing, attorney Daniel Horowitz, who had earlier promised a new suit that would pass legal muster, said Thursday that Savage has a legitimate case but has decided not to pursue it.

We look forward to learning how much exactly Savage raised from all his supporters, and how exactly the money was spent.

The lawsuit has received considerable media attention. The idea was, of course, doomed from the beginning: CAIR used clips of Savage’s vulgar radio rants against Muslims to urge an advertiser boycott, and Savage claimed copyright infringement. That had to fail under fair-usage provisions – as was demonstrated years ago in a case concerning Jerry Falwell’s use of materials copyrighted to Larry Flynt. Realising this, Savage opportunistically added a “racketeering” claim to his lawsuit, which allowed him to grandstand as someone opposing terrorist-supporters. The lawsuit was tossed in March, and again a few days ago, at which point WND‘s Aaron Klein predictably rumbled darkly about how the judge had been “nominated to her position by President Bill Clinton”.

Klein also quoted Savage, who was then in bullish mood:

“I’m going to open up this case. I’m going to sue CAIR. I’m bringing a lawsuit back against them. It’s going to cost me a fortune,” Savage said. “And when Judge Illston rejects it again, which she will do because she’s a minion of the Bill Clinton crowd, I’m going to take it over her head and I’m going to go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where again I’m going to hit a stonewall. And then I’m going to take it to the Supreme Court until eventually I force CAIR to describe who their funding sources are…First they came for Michel Savage, and you didn’t raise your voice and you laughed. Then they came after Abercrombie and Fitch, and you didn’t raise your voice because you weren’t in the retail business. Tomorrow they’ll come after you and your business.”

You wouldn’t think that it was Savage who had gone to court to try to stop CAIR from criticising him, rather than the other way round – and  Aaron Klein is hardly going to put the record straight (nor Farah, with his “defense fund” nonsense). Klein added:

The top radio host urged listeners to make online donations at his website to help fund his lawsuit.

Presumably these will now be returned.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Horowitz insists that

Savage can prove the Islamic organization engaged in a conspiracy that harmed him financially

The “proof” being that when people heard what Savage had to say, they found him to be repellent. Some “conspiracy” – Savage has managed to put most people off without CAIR’s assistance.

Horowitz also gives us a reason for the sudden change of heart. Apparently he

said he feared his client would be in danger if he continued the case. The attorney said he has no evidence that CAIR commits violent acts but alleged that the Islamic group is out to silence Savage and conducts campaigns that may stir up violence by others.

So Savage is suddenly too scared to continue? Come off it. But such an excuse must disgust what’s left of Savage’s core audience of bigots – even those who didn’t hand over cash for a case he was going to take all the way to the Supreme Court. And surely this must be a huge embarrassment for Joseph Farah, who urged his readers to contribute?

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From Arutz Sheva:

Baptist preacher and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee soon will be accompanied by religious Jewish New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind on a two-day visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall (Kotel) and the rocket-battered southern town of Sderot…During their visit to the Western Wall, where Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama recently toured, Huckabee and Hikind will be escorted by leaders of Ateret Kohanim Yeshiva, located in the Old Jewish Quarter of the Old City, now populated predominantly by Arabs…Huckabee, who was introduced by Hikind at the Jerusalem Reclamation Project dinner in June, has visited Israel nine times.

Ateret Kohanim is a militant settler movement, and it has has featured on this blog in the past: its chief backer, an American businessman named Irwin Moskowitz, has reportedly defended Baruch Goldstein (perpetrator of the 1994 Hebron massacre) and there are claims that he is sympathetic to the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin. In 2000 it was reported that a website registered to the name of his wife contained a game which featured then-prime minister Ehud Barak exploding. Moskowitz’s son-in-law, Aryeh King, co-ordinates Ateret Kohanim and other settler groups working in Palestinian areas of Jerusalem through an organisation called the “Jerusalem Forum”, which also includes groups planning to build the “Third Temple”.

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Tim LaHaye speaks:

I can see by the language he uses why people think [Obama] could be the antichrist, but from my reading of scripture, he doesn’t meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the antichrist will be an American.

Actually, there’s “no indication” that Bible authors had any knowledge at all of the western hemisphere, but we’ll leave that aside. Snopes has more on the subject here.

The owner of this blog will doubtless be unimpressed.

(Hat tip: Ed Brayton)

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WorldNetDaily offers up one of its more absurd “exclusives”: a puff-piece for a book entitled Temple at the Center of Time: Newton’s Bible Codex Deciphered and the Year 2012. The author, David Flynn, argues that the relative distances of various cities from the site of the Jerusalem Temple is a key to history. Prepare to be mind-numbed:

Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians on the 16th day of Tishri of the Jewish calendar, which correlates to Oct. 12, 539 B.C. Curiously, the number 539 is also the distance in statute miles between the temple of Jerusalem’s foundation stone to the palace of Balthazar, as confirmed by modern satellite measurement.

…In the 17th century, Christopher Wren was able to observe the foundations of the London Stone underneath Cannon Street during the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. With this information, it is possible to extend a measuring line from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to the exact center of ancient London, and by fixing a point on the site of the temple mount, a measuring line extended over Jerusalem to the center of London produces 1,948.40 nautical miles…Israel became a nation again May 14th, 1948…

And so on. Why switch from “statue miles” to “nautical miles”? Why use measurements that were unknown to Biblical authors? Why base everything around 1CE, when this is simply a conventional date for the birth of Jesus, rather than historically exact? Just a few of the questions with which the WND hack is blissfully unconcerned.

Further details appear in a review in the California Chronicle:

“Temple at the Center of Time” discusses the significance of the number 33. For instance, 33% of [I think he means “or” – RB] one third of an hour is 19 minutes and 48 seconds. Yes, 1948…

Unless you want one third of an hour, which gives you twenty minutes, but that wouldn’t fit.

…Amazing also is Avebury Circle…”The latitude of the Avebury Circle was established with such precision that it underscores the importance of ‘2520’ as key to the circle´s intended message…If 2,520 years are counted forward from the fall of Babylon in 539 B.C. and the 33 years that Christ walked the Earth are subtracted, the year is A.D. 1948, the rebirth of Israel.

This is all in a grand tradition of crackpot interpretations of ancient monuments; significantly, WorldNetDaily has also promoted the pseudo-science of pyramidology.

However, the WND piece fails to note how all this fits into Flynn’s wider theories, or to tell us much about him at all. A short bio appears on this site:

In 1991 after completing his education at Carroll College in Montana, David Flynn created the “watcher Website” combining his background in Theology and Clinical Psychology in the research of biblical ufology. David’s website is a repository for research dealing with UFOs, the Monuments of Cydonia on Mars, Angels, Aliens & End Time Prophecy.David has written popular articles on Mars and of the Biblical significance of the Cydonian Monuments. His decidedly alternative views on Cydonia were presented on the television programs “Strange Universe”, and the PAX TV’s -“Encounters with the Unexplained: What is Really on Mars,” which explored the meaning behind the Pyramids and Sphinx-face found in NASA images of the surface of Cydonia Mars. David’s Flynn’s new book discusses knowledge that was previously known only by the highest ranking members of Mystery Schools.

Another site calls him “a well known crypto-archaeologist in the Christian community”. Some of his ideas are laid out on his own website. One essay he appears particularly proud of is “An Occult Translation of the Roswell Event: Count down to 2012”, where he tells us that

It is significant that the United States recovered the debris and “alien” bodies of the Roswell crash on the 4th of July 1947. America itself was founded on the same date in 1776. This year was chosen by the occult elite behind the formation of America for a special reason.

888 is the sum of the letters in Greek of the name Jesus (each Greek letter represents a number). A second “messiah” (888) plus the first messiah (888) = 1776…We know that 33 degrees of earth’s circumference is 2012 miles and that 33 is a prominent number in the Roswell message. 33 is also prominently featured in the location of the first descent of angelic forces to Mt. Hermon. Might this numeric connection indicate a similar type event occurring in the year 2012?…

However, while this silliness is mostly all good fun, the references to “Mystery Schools” and an “occult elite” show that Flynn is also tapping into the kind of darker conspiracy-mongering seen in the likes of John Hagee. Here’s another essay, entitled “Babylon Revisited”:

In America’s modern colleges, though there are 360 degrees in a complete circle, a student’s four years of intellectual labor and thousands of dollars produce only the graduation of one degree. This accomplishment earns the student a Bacchus laurel, for this is really what “bachelor” means. Bacchus is the Roman version of Dionysus, Greek god of wine revelry and facades, lies, and drunkenness.

During the ritual of graduation, the degree candidate wears a symbolic hat–a mortarboard. The mortarboard represents the common person’s function in a world system controlled by the occult elite, to carry the cement for building to the stonemasons…The academic system of the West was designed by the occult elite from the beginning, and it is still under their control. The highest members of the “occult Brotherhood” past and present consider themselves graduates of 33 degrees. 2 It would not be possible to acquire 33 degrees through the academic institutions of Europe and America in one lifetime. Only through the membership in the secret fraternal institutions of the occult can 33 degrees be obtained.

One point that struck me: America was founded in 1776 due to an “occult elite”, yet Israel was founded in 1948 presumably due to God’s plan (as with Christian Zionism). But what’s to prevent someone from tweaking this so that 1948 is also the result of a conspiracy? As with David Icke, John Hagee, Pat Robertson, and others who go down this road of seeing secret patterns in history, the potential for anti-Semitism remains, whatever their own intentions. This essay by Chip Berlet provides some useful context.

Earlier this year WND carried an attack on the Bible Literacy Project. The BLP is a syllabus for studying the Bible in schools, looking at historical context and drawing on the work of serious Biblical and literary scholars. But while WND objects to a historical-critical look at the Bible, a man who uses the Bible to create a bizarre mash of paranoia and fantasy that has absolutely no respect for the intended meanings of the Biblical text apparently deserves a puff piece.

One blogger casts a sceptical eye over Flynn’s ideas here.

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The AP reports from Bhutan:

“The creature has always been out there, and it’s out there still,” says Sonam Dorji, 77, sitting on the pockmarked wooden floor of his small farmhouse…His son-in-law, listening to the old man’s stories, laughs dismissively from across the room…”There’s nothing out there in the forest. Any educated person today knows this.”

…”We can’t live today like we did in the 17th or 18th century. Our culture has to be dynamic,” says Khandu Wangchuck, Bhutan’s finance minister. “Within the last 40 years, we’ve jumped 300-400 years.”

And the yeti? Wangchuck pauses. “I think most people today know this is just a story.”

Meanwhile, in the USA:

Hunters in northern Georgia, claiming to have found Bigfoot and stored him in a freezer, are promising to release telling pictures and DNA evidence of the creature.

…Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer plan to fly to Palo Alto, Calif., and unveil proof of their discovery at a noon press conference this Friday at the Cabana Hotel, according to a report by Searching for Bigfoot Inc. The event will be open to members of the news media only.

A photograph of some kind of dead ape in a chest freezer is provided.

The story in fact first appeared in July in the Fayette Daily News, and was noted by the Bigfoot Researchers’ Lunch Club. Details in this earlier account are not encouraging:

…In one video, posted online by “RDYER678,” Whitton and Dyer interview a “pathologist” who is shocked at the Bigfoot, but then, in a follow-up video, the pair admits the “doctor of pathology” is actually Whitton’s brother. Standing in a kitchen, Whitton’s brother says to the camera, “Live and let live. What happened to that? Guys just trying to have a little fun, you know?”

Dyer said the claims are not a prank, though, and not just an attempt to have fun. Reached on his cell phone Tuesday, he insisted the body is real and will be unveiled on Sept. 1 on the web site

“Why would we jeopardize Matt’s job? Why would we risk the embarrassment of the backlash that we would get? We just have a lot to lose if this is a hoax … I thought Bigfoot trackers and hunters were ridiculous and I made fun of them, to be honest, and I still do. They know nothing as fact. We do,” Dyer said.

Dyer said the Internet announcement and the obvious lie were meant to draw detractors and “build hype.” Other Bigfoot researchers were dismissed by Dyer, and he said he and Whitton are the best trackers because they “have a body.”

…Dyer said he and Whitton plan to sell the Bigfoot body and make a lot of money.

“As of right now,” he said, “we’ve been offered a million bucks for it, from a very credible source. But we’ll make 10 times that. This will change history forever.”

The alleged discovery comes just a few months after the publication of a paper by Matthew Bowman in the Journal of Mormon History, entitled “A Mormon Bigfoot: David Patten’s Cain and the Concept of Evil in LDS Folklore”. Patten claimed to have encountered a very hairy person in 1835, and that this was none other than Cain, from the Bible:

As I was riding along the road on my mule I suddenly noticed a very strange personage walking beside me… His head was about even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle. He wore no clothing, but was covered with hair. His skin was very dark. I asked him where he dwelt and he replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth and traveled to and fro. He said he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought death during his sojourn upon the earth, but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men. About the time he expressed himself thus, I rebuked him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by virtue of the Holy Priesthood, and commanded him to go hence, and he immediately departed out of my sight…

UPDATE: The London Times reports:

An American police officer who claimed to have found Bigfoot has been fired from the force after it emerged that the hairy heap in his freezer was not the half-man, half-ape of myth, but a full-length rubber gorilla costume.

…”As soon as we saw it was a hoax, I filed the paperwork to terminate his employment,” said Chief [Jeffrey] Turner.

“He’s disgraced himself, he’s an embarrassment to the Clayton County Police Department, his credibility and integrity as an officer is gone, and I have no use for him,” he declared.

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In an unusual development, Mr Justice Eady has made a ruling that does something positive for free speech on-line in the UK. Out Law  reports:

Defamation on internet bulletin boards is more like slander than libel, a High Court judge has ruled. Mr Justice Eady said that bulletin board discussions are characterised by “give and take” and should be considered in that context.

“[Bulletin board posts] are rather like contributions to a casual conversation (the analogy sometimes being drawn with people chatting in a bar) which people simply note before moving on; they are often uninhibited, casual and ill thought out…Those who participate know this and expect a certain amount of repartee or ‘give and take’.

“When considered in the context of defamation law, therefore, communications of this kind are much more akin to slanders (this cause of action being nowadays relatively rare) than to the usual, more permanent kind of communications found in libel actions…People do not often take a ‘thread’ and go through it as a whole like a newspaper article. They tend to read the remarks, make their own contributions if they feel inclined, and think no more about it…Opinions may be expressed in exaggerated and strident terms; the only requirement is that they be honestly held.”

…”I would not suggest for a moment that blogging cannot ever form the basis of a legitimate libel claim,” he said. “I am focusing only on these particular circumstances.”

It seems to me, though, that this may be of relevance when it comes to comments left on blogs: alleged libels by commentators can cause difficulties for blog owners, as I noted last year. Unlike libel, slander requires evidence of actual financial loss.

Eady’s ruling is a dismissal of a claim made by a certain Nigel Smith, who runs a shareholder action group. Smith went after 37 contributors to a discussion board, and his targets included posters who had simply objected to Smith’s litigiousness.

Mr Justice Eady said that Smith had persistently pursued cases which were without merit and issued a civil restraint order against him, barring him from starting further actions. He later conceded that he could not do that, though, because he had stopped lawyers arguing about a civil restraint order in the course of the trial.

Eady’s ruling comes two years after another man named Smith won damages for libellous comments in a Yahoo discussion group.

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(updated 20 August 2008)

Over the past couple of years, various pro-Palestinian activists (some more reputable than others) have received strange menacing emails from a person who styles himself as “Dr Charles Edgbaston”, or “His Eminence The Very Rev. Charles J. Edgbaston, D.D., Ph.D”. The rambling emails – which contrast “Holy Israel” with the “Satanic Palestinians” – typically warn the recipients that they have been judged to be supportive of Palestinian terrorists, and that:

…it is my solemn duty to inform you that our Ecclesiastical Court has issued an edict inscribing you as a SLANDERER OF ZION and a TERRORIST COLLABORATOR. This means that, ipso facto, you are deemed to be an ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.Our disciples are hereby empowered to facilitate your removal from your residence and from your place of employment. They are also to initiate a 24/7 monitoring program of your activities.In addition, an application will be made in London to have the administrative law courts revoke your passport for consorting with certain groups that are fronts for proscribed Middle East terrorists. Your inscription on the watch lists of the United Kingdom, the United States and the EU will be sought. Cause will also be given to diminish your pensionable earnings under the Terror Act. As well, a notification of this indictment will be printed in the American, British and Israeli print media and your associates and family will be so notified.

…May our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Son of Mary, have mercy upon you.You may wish to exercise your right to have this decree set aside. In such case, you are invited to submit a notarized affidavit renouncing your calumnies against the holy Jewish state, circulating a statement of support for the victory of the holy Jewish people in the Holy Land against their terrorist enemies to all your affiliated organizations and publishing it in the media, both online or offline, and paying our court costs of US$7500.

So, who is Charles Edgbaston? According to the emails, he is

Chair, Christians for Moses Ministries Inc. and Rector, Zion College of Canada, Penticton.

Neither of these organisations has any web presence, and Edgbaston himself is obscure. The earliest web presence that I could find dates to 2003, in an ombudsman’s report on Middle East coverage by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

Rev. Edgbaston wrote to complain about [a] CBC Radio program’s interview Jan. 21, 2002, with the controversial Israeli historian, Prof. Ilan Pappe, who has largely adopted the Palestinian critique of Israeli policies. The complainant described the interview as “sickening,” saying “Prof. Pappe had nothing but venom to spew out against Israel…Rev.Edgbaston asked for a review, saying “the rot at CBO is entrenched and must be uprooted.” 

Edgbaston’s most detailed self-description is here:

Meanwhile, a comment left on a blog by “Ahinder Fonseca, Ph.D” tells us that

Dr. Charles Edgbaston is a leading Christian Zionist who has exposed Prof. Norman Finkelstein as a self-hating schizophrenic Hebrew. He was also the teacher of Prof. Harold Williams who demolished the fictional book “Beyond Chutzpah’ authored by Finkelstein. Dr. Edgbaston, 77, has a Ph.D. in Arabic and earned his Doctor of Divinity (D.D.) with his thesis on Muhammad’s Exhortations on Jewish Ownership of the Holy Land.

In his threatening emails Edgbaston has a tendency to associate himself with other organisations by beginning with the phrase, “Reliable sources at [Insert Org] have informed Christians for Moses Ministries that you are…” Organisations that he claims have “informed” him include the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem and the World Association of Survivors of Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camps; in fact, there is no indication that he has had any contact these organisations or with any others that he cites, and I doubt that they would want to be associated with either his methods or his overheated rhetoric. In 2006 The International Christian Embassy issued a statement confirming that

The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem wishes to clarify that we have never conveyed to Rev. Charles Edgbaston any views or opinions on Prof Ilan Pappe.
David Parsons
ICEJ Public Relations Officer

And Anglican Friends of Israel states that

In recent days some emails have been brought to our attention claiming to be from His Eminence the Very Rev Charles Edgbaston, D.D., Ph.D…These emails make claims about ‘reliable sources’ at Anglican Friends of Israel (AFI) and, in one case, ‘extensive consultations’ with AFI…We do not know at present if these emails are genuinely from Charles Edgbaston but, whatever their origin, we strongly reject any claim that Anglican Friends of Israel has been or ever would be involved in such activities. Our legal representatives are writing to Charles Edgbaston to establish whether the emails came from him and to demand that, if so, he desist from any such claims bout AFI’s involvement.

As for Edgbaston’s associates, Elias Aboud (var. “Elias Abboud”) is sometimes described as “Pastor Elias Aboud, Court Registrar for Christians for Moses Ministries Inc.” Edgbaston and Aboud appear with two other associates on a petition against a Palestinian academic:

Rev. Anthony Habib Zion College of Canada…
Pastor Robert Johnston Christians for Moses Ministries Inc.

Anthony Habib appears elsewhere as “Antoine Habib”; all are equally as obscure as Edgbaston himself. Harold Williams, however, entered a debate with the owner of this website; just as Edgbaston praises Williams, Williams in turn praises “the important expose by Rev. Edgbaston”. The two Arabic names, and Edgbaston’s fondness for Roman Catholic titles, suggest to me that he’s involved with some kind of Maronite traditionalist Catholic grouping, but that’s just a guess.

As well as hating Palestinians and their supporters, Edgbaston also dislikes the British:

Britain truly occupies Iraq. She truly occupies Afghanistan. In these countries, she has committed unspeakable tortures against innocent Muslim civilians. In Basra, this filthy colonialist occupier has destroyed children’s playgrounds, mutilated prisoners, forced young girls to perform oral sex on the male bodies of its troops and gone from neighbourhood to neighbourhood demolishing homes and community centres.

So why does Edgbaston keep such a low profile? Could it be because when it comes to threatening people he is one of those who can dish it out but not take it? It seems to me that a promise to have someone monitored and removed from their home and employment must count as either malicious communication, harrassment, or threatening behaviour, and that kind of thing tends to have consequences in the real world of court actions.

Incidentally, the name “Christians for Moses” is associated with Kahanist anti-missionary activity in Israel. Time reported in 1973:

Two weeks ago, eleven members of the Jewish Defense League were charged with arson against a missionary bookstore. At a protest fast at the Wailing Wall, the J.D.L.’s rabble-rousing Rabbi Meir Kahane announced, “If you lose a Jew in Auschwitz or through conversion, it’s still a soul lost.” He later proclaimed the formation of a 25-member countergroup called “Christians for Moses.”

The name re-emerged in Florida in the 1990s; a now-defunct website has some details:

Christians for Moses was co-founded by Ex-Baptist Minister The Late Delroy Brockett & Rabbi Yerachmiel Gersh of The Jewish Defense League in 1993 to bring G-d’s truth to both Jews & Gentiles.Why the name Christians For Moses if we rejected Christianity?

Actually this name is not original nor are the reasons & the concept as the concept was thought up way back in the 70’s by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane OF Saintly Memory as an answer & reaction to Jews For Jesus & similar type groups & brought to life by his student Rabbi Yerachmiel Gersh & The Late DelRoy Brockett an Ex-Bapist minister turned Noahide.

Today Christians for Moses is under the directorship of Mariano Otero a former Pentecostal Minister who today is a fully committed Orthodox Jew who teaches Bnai Noach & wayward Jews the truth as revealed in the Torah.

Mariano Otero is also known as Moshe Otero, and his “Christians for Moses” was part of an organisation called “The Ways of Israel“. I have blogged on Noahides in the past, see here. Edgbaston does not appear to have any links with this group, or to share its theology.

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