Bartholomew's Notes

Various news sources are reporting on an archaeological find in Ethiopia. Here’s how the DPA tells it:

Archaeologists believe they have found the Queen of Sheba’s palace at Axum, Ethiopia and an altar which held the most precious treasure of ancient Judaism, the Ark of the Covenant, the University of Hamburg said Wednesday. Scientists from the German city made the startling find during their spring excavation of the site over the past three months.

Meanwhile, a Bloomberg report has a slight – but somewhat significant – difference (emphasis added):

A team of archaeologists from the University of Hamburg said they discovered the Queen of Sheba’s palace and an altar that may have once held the Ark of the Covenant in Axum, Ethiopia.

Back to the DPA:

The Ethiopian queen was the bride of King Solomon of Israel in the 10th century before the Christian era. The royal match is among the memorable events in the Bible.

Actually, no – as various other blogs have pointed out (see here and here), the story does not appear in the Bible at all. However, there is a much later Ethiopian legend (collected in the Kebra Negast) concerning how Solomon used that famous wisdom of his to get the Queen of Sheba into bed, and how their son later took the Ark of the Covenant away to Ethiopia. As is well known, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to have it in a church in Axum, where it is hidden behind a curtain and guarded by a monk. The DPA continues:

The University said scientists led by Helmut Ziegert had found remains of a 10th-century-BC palace at Axum-Dungur under the palace of a later Christian king. There was evidence the early palace had been torn down and realigned to the path of the star Sirius.

Bloomberg adds the detail that the original structure “probably didn’t survive for very long”, which gives us a better idea of when the original structure was destroyed and the realignment occurred. The DPA again:

The team hypothesized that Menelek had changed religion and become a worshipper of Sirius while keeping the Ark, described in the Bible as an acacia-wood chest covered with gold. Remains of sacrifices of bullocks were evident around the altar.

The research at Axum, which began in 1999, is aimed at documenting the origins of the Ethiopian state and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

“The results we have suggest that a Cult of Sothis developed in Ethiopia with the arrival of Judaism and the Ark of the Covenant and continued until 600 AD,” the announcement said. Sothis is the ancient Greek name for a star thought to be Sirius.

That’s quite some hypothesizing going on there. A few questions from a layperson, if I may:

(1) What actual evidence links this site to Sheba, which may in fact have been in Yemen?

(2) What actual evidence is there that the altar was designed to hold an ark?

(3) Even if there is evidence of some kind of an ark-like object, why assume that it was the Ark? The Biblical description of the Ark suggests a cult object based on models from Egyptian religion – might that not apply to any cult object at this site?

(4) How is it sensible to speak of Menelek “changing religion”, even if we accept a historical Menelek? Just because there are supposed signs of correspondence with Israelite religion at the site, that hardly means that Israelite theology was ever adopted wholesale, or (to return to the point above) even that the correspondences derive from Israelite models. Further, even if Ziegert is correct in his hypothesis about the Ark and the adoption of Israelite beliefs, according to the Bible there were all kinds of religious practices and ideas being assimilated into Israelite religious life during the early First Temple period. Of course, the Biblical authors were appalled by most of these, but their appearance does not amount to “changing religion”. In the same way Menelek (or his successors) could have simply added veneration of Sirius to religious practices.

However, such caveats are unlikely to bother many people; WorldNetDaily’s top story is currently “Ark of the Covenant altar found in Sheba’s palace”, and various US discussion threads are pondering what this means as regards the Last Days and the building of the Third Temple.

Ziegert’s website can be seen here, although there isn’t currently anything there about this story.

UPDATE: WND has belatedly added some quotation marks around “Ark of the Covenant altar” in its headline.

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The Guardian reports:

A long-standing and prominent Iranian opposition group must be struck off the government’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations, the appeal court ruled yesterday.

In a move attacked by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, and by senior Iranian officials, the court dismissed ministers’ claims that the People’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) was “concerned in terrorism”.

Three judges led by Lord Phillips, the lord chief justice, refused Smith leave to contest a decision by the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission last year that to proscribe the group was “perverse”. Smith “could not reasonably have formed the view” then that the PMOI “intended in future to revert to terrorism”, they said.

…Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the Iranian Resistance movement, said the terror label had inflicted enormous damage on the Iranian people. “The United Kingdom and western governments owe the people of Iran an apology over this shameful designation,” she said.

The AFP adds:

The United States will be under pressure to stop banning an Iranian opposition movement as “terrorist” following a court ruling Wednesday in Britain, a former opposition spokesman said.

…Encouraged by the ruling was Alireza Jafarzadeh, who was spokesman for the National Resistance Council of Iran (NRCI), the PMOI’s political wing, until the State Department banned both as a “foreign terrorist organization” in 2003.

…”Congress, which was putting pressure before, is going to doubly put pressure on the State Department,” Jafarzadeh said.

He claimed public opinion opposed the designation in a political climate in which Washington accuses Iran of supporting Shiite militias in Iraq and of pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

PMOI is also known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), and concerns about its activity are long-standing. Liberal hawk blog Harry’s Place listed these last July:

The MEK is led by a husband and wife, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, it “has increasingly come to resemble a cult.” During the 1970s, the Council adds, MEK supported “killings of U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran” as well as “the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries.” In 1991, MEK assisted “Saddam Hussein’s suppression of the 1991 Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish uprisings.” In other words, the group collaborated in genocidal massacres.

The MEK claims to seek a secular and democratic Iran; it promises free elections. The truth is much more sinister. Elizabeth Rubin emphasized the cultist nature of the organisation in a detailed report (New York Times Magazine , July 13, 2003)…

That report can be seen here. Highlights:

…the Mujahedeen operates like any other military dictatorship. Mujahedeen members have no access to newspapers or radio or television, other than what is fed them. As the historian Abrahamian told me, “No one can criticize Rajavi.” And everyone must go through routine self-criticism sessions. “It’s all done on tape, so they have records of what you say. If there’s a sign of resistance, you are considered not revolutionary enough, and you need more ideological training. Either people breakaway or succumb.”

Salahaddin Mukhtadi, an Iranian historian in exile who still maintains communications with the Mujahedeen because it’s the strongest armed opposition to the Iranian regime, told me that Mujahedeen members “are locked up if they disagree with anything. And sometimes killed.”

Afshari, who fled the group 10 years ago, told me how friendship was forbidden. No two people could sit alone and talk together, especially about their former lives…Though Maryam and Massoud finagled it so they could be together, they forced everyone else into celibacy. “They told us, ‘We are at war, and soldiers cannot have wives and husbands,'”

Rubin’s piece also quotes Maryam Rajavi as having allegedly advised her fighters in 1991 to take “the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards”.

MEK was also the subject of a damning Human Rights Watch report which made the same complaints. MEK’s response has been to suggest that such critics have either been hoodwinked by, or are in collusion with, Iranian security services. PMOI officially renounced violence in 2001, and in the USA members of the neo-conservative right have been lobbying on its behalf; the above Harry’s Place posting was written in opposition to a pro-MEK piece by Daniel Pipes. However, in the UK support for PMOI has been cross-party, and in January Labour peer Robin Corbett wrote a piece in which he asserted that the government’s motivation for the ban was to placate the Iranian government. Of course, a group may indeed be non-terrorist and the enemy of something harmful while still remaining very dodgy. MEK believes that it should be supported because of the repressive acts and belligerence of the Iranian government, and we should remember that new people joining a group or internal dissent can have a moderating effect. However, we should also bear in mind factors such as the following:

(Hat tip: Ruth Gledhill, who judges the government’s opposition to PMOI to be a form of religious persecution)

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Letter claims investigation motivated by media opposition to “evangelical teachings and socially conservative policy positions”

American Christian Right leaders have come together to decry the Senate Finance Committee’s investigation into the finances of several “mega-ministries”. The leaders have written a letter, which is available on Townhall (I’ve reformatted the signatories to save space and for ease of reading):

United States Congress

U.S. Capitol

Washington, DC 20002

May 2, 2008

Dear Senate Finance Committee Member:

We write respectfully to let you know of our concerns about the Senate Finance Committee’s investigation into the finances of several churches, all of which share the same branch of evangelicalism, and all of which promote socially conservative public policy positions such as support for the traditional definition of marriage.

While we recognize that some evangelical teachings and socially conservative policy positions are controversial, and that these churches have been the subject of sensational investigative journalism, we are nonetheless concerned that this would possibly justify an investigation outside the normal confines of the Internal Revenue Service and established administrative and judicial procedures.

Congress passed the Church Audit Procedures Act in 1984 specifically to discourage politically driven audits of churches. The Act prevents the Internal Revenue Service from initiating an investigation into a church’s finances unless a “high level Treasury official” concludes that there is reasonable cause for such an investigation. The Act also protects a church under investigation from politically motivated leaks during the course of the examination.

We are unaware of any finding by a high-level Treasury Department official that there is reasonable cause to open an investigation of any of these ministries.

We are concerned that the Senate Finance Committee may be setting a dangerous precedent that may be difficult to reverse.  For one thing, controversy will always be a part of religious teaching.  And religious controversy is something the media will inevitably strive to exploit, since the media feed on controversy and have demonstrated a bias against evangelical Christians.  The Committee’s reliance on media reports in targeting subjects for its investigation would therefore only seem to reinforce this unfortunate bias, however unwittingly.

We cannot recall instances in the past where a congressional committee has targeted major ministries under threat of subpoena. The ministries have been asked to produce financial records and internal documents in what appears to be an exercise in disproving their alleged guilt.

Congress has a legitimate role to play in oversight of our laws, including tax laws governing churches. And ministries have the obligation to be transparent in their financial accounting. But the targeting of specific ministries by a congressional committee would seem to intrude on the free exercise of religion guaranteed under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We believe this is why churches are properly exempt from taxation in the first place — to prevent governments from using their power to tax as a way to limit the free exercise of religion.

We respectfully ask that investigations into the finances of specific ministries be left with the Internal Revenue Service, overseen and approved by a Treasury Department official who has affirmed that there is reasonable cause for such an investigation, in accordance with the Church Audit Procedures Act.

Signed,

Paul Weyrich, Chairman, Coalitions for America; Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman, American Family Association; Ken Blackwell, Chairman, Coalition for a Conservative Majority; William Murray, Chairman, Religious Freedom Coalition; Rev. Bill Owens, President, Coalition of African American Pastors; Victoria Cobb, President, The Family Foundation of Virginia; Dr. Gary Cass, Chairman/CEO, Christian Anti-Defamation Commission; Pastor Craig Polston, Kingdom Baptist Church, Fredericksburg, Virginia; Pastor Bob Emrich, The Maine Jeremiah Project, Emmanuel Bible Baptist Church; Dr. Carl Herbster, President, AdvanceUSA; Anthony Verdugo, Christian Family Coalition; Deal W. Hudson, Director, InsideCatholic.com; Rev. Rick Scarborough, President, Vision America; Star Parker, President, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education; Colin Hanna, President, Pennsylvania Pastors Network; Dr. Danny Forshee, Pastor, First Baptist Church, Lavaca, Arkansas; Sadie Fields, State Chairman, Georgia Christian Alliance; Pastor Jack Knapp, Sandston, Virginia; Larry Cirignano, Founder, CatholicVote; James Martin, President, 60 Plus; George Landrith, President, Frontiers of Freedom; Mathew Staver, Dean and Professor of Law, Liberty University School of Law; Rev. Rob Schenck, National Clergy Council

The investigation, as is well known, is being overseen by Sen. Charles Grassley, and he is focussing on Without Walls International Church, Benny Hinn Ministries, Joyce Meyer Ministries, Kenneth Copeland Ministries, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and World Changers Church International. Media reports have, in recent months and years, highlighed a number of financial controversies involving these and other ministries: questions have been raised about Kenneth Copeland’s private use of a ministry jet, and concerning Benny Hinn’s penchant for luxurious hotels. Morris Cerullo, Mac Hammond, and (from Canada) Paul Melnichuk have also faced negative publicity over the use of money. Grassley clearly has a personal distaste for the “Prosperity Gospel” and for the lavish lifestyles enjoyed by certain ministry leaders (who often receive donations from vulnerable people hoping for some kind of miracle from God), but to claim that the investigation is driven simply by media bias against “evangelical teachings and socially conservative policy positions” is disingenuous.

However, the letter does raise a legitimate issue, and concerns about Grassley’s approach appeared in Christianity Today in January:

…take this comment, published on Grassley’s website: “As a Christian myself, and a person who believes in tithing, I feel I have a right to know where my money goes.”

But the law allows churches not to disclose their finances, even to their own members. Indeed, it was Grassley himself who introduced the Church Audit Procedures Act in 1983, which significantly limited irs investigations into church finances.

…Several of the ministries targeted by Grassley (and others not targeted) appear to provide excessive compensation to their celebrity leaders. So we encourage them to disclose their finances. We welcome irs investigations into allegations of mismanaged funds, and we don’t oppose a Senate query into whether further legislation is necessary. At the same time, it’s hard to see how further legislation would be helpful. It would only amount to more government intrusion into church governance.

…But churches—even ones that spout heresies like the health-and-wealth gospel—are protected by the First Amendment in ways that the Nature Conservancy and Smithsonian are not. Grassley was on dangerous ground when he told reporters, “Jesus comes into the city on a simple mule, and you got people today expanding his gospel in corporate jets. Somebody ought to raise questions about [whether] it’s right or wrong.” There’s an important theological question here, but a Senate investigation is not the place to ask it.

Meanwhile, Grassley’s investigation has been noted in other countries; Ghana has many prosperity preachers, and a recent opinion piece in the Accra Public Agenda observed that

…In the USA, a Republican senator, Charles Grassley of Iowa has recently begun a crusade against these so-called prosperity preachers. Grassley is asking the ministries for financial records on salaries, spending practices, private jets and other perks…However, what is important is the pervasive nature of the extent of exploitation that is going on in many churches.

…It appears the modern church has been characterized by a new wave of corruption that is unheard of in religious circles. Rather than instill hope, they are making poverty widespread. Rather than strengthen families, they are tearing them apart; it looks as if people will tear down as many good livable housing to build these huge churches, multiplying the homeless problem in record numbers.

(Hit tip: Melissa Rogers)

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Bruce Wilson at Talk to Action has posted some interesting photographs of apocalyptic Christian Zionist mega-church pastor John Hagee hanging out with some rather well-known people.

Hagee has featured on this blog before (see search function), and his recent endorsement of John McCain has caused some controversy. The video below presents a typical Hagee sermon, although someone else has ornamented it with pictures and music.

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Stronger Russian Church Presence in Israel-Palestine Decried by Greek Patriarch

From Interfax:

Professor of the Moscow Spiritual Academy Deacon Andrey Kuraev said that the Moscow Patriarchate should begin actively preaching among the Russian-speaking Jews of Israel…He noted that the Russian Jewish community in Israel consisted mostly of intelligentsia (middle class), but he doubted that the “local Greek Patriarch” had enough resources to communicate with this group which “shows a great interest in Christianity”.

There are many Russian Israelis whose links to Judaism or Jewish identity are rather tenuous, but who have taken advantage of Israel’s “right of return” to move to Israel. If they are religious at all, their religion is likely to be Russian Orthodox Christianity. The consequences of this population shift (as I’ve blogged before) were the subject of a 1999 academic article by Ian Lustick, entitled “Israel as a non-Arab State”. Roger Owen briefly summarized the findings in Al-Ahram in 2000. Among them:

…First, no meaningful debate on the question of the Jewishness of the Russian immigrants can be carried on without raising the whole notion of the Right of Return and so, by extension, one of the main rationales for the Zionist project in the twentieth century. Second, given the demographic struggle between Israeli Jews and the Palestinians, the Jewish Israelis would be unhappy about any diminution in the numbers they claim for their side. This also makes sense if one considers that the non-Jewish Russians are just as likely to be anti-Palestinian as their Jewish compatriots.

Seen from this point of view, the construction of Russian Orthodox churches in the communities where there is a heavy concentration of Russian immigrants makes perfect sense. So too does the increasing unwillingness to question people’s religion and ethnic origins. According to Lustick, the 1995 census was the first in Israeli history not to ask questions about what is obviously becoming an increasingly contentious, but also increasingly blurred, situation regarding individual religious and ethnic identity.

The ultra-Orthodox political party Shas is particularly opposed to this development, and has referred to the immigrants as “hundreds of thousands of Gentiles flooding the land with pork, prostitution, impurity and filth”. Given the noises currently being made by rightwing Israeli anti-missionary organizations (discussed yesterday) against Messianic Jews, a plan to “preach” to Russian Jews is not likely to be well received in certain quarters.

However, Kuraev’s jibe about the “local Greek Patriarch” being unable to missionize suggests that the Russian church has another priority: extending its influence in the “Holy Land”. As I blogged a year ago, the Russian Orthodox Church has over the last decade or so been reclaiming property in both Israel and the Palestinian territories which it had lost during the Communist era, and the re-unification of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia has doubtless made this process easier. Just a few weeks ago Interfax reported the return of an Orthodox compound in Jerusalem:

An Orthodox compound in Jerusalem, Segiyevskoye Podvorye, will be handed over to Russia in the coming months, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s official spokesman Eddi Shapira told a delegation of Russian journalists in Jerusalem’s City Hall.

…”The process should be over by the end of June,” the ambassador said, adding that the compound would be handed over to Russia.

According to a report in Russia Profile, the compound, also spelt as “Sergievskoe Podvorye”, is

a two-storey, 4000 square meter house with a spacious green courtyard, which was completed in 1879 as a hotel for the nobles and the headquarters of the [Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society].

This building was not included in property sold off to Israel by Khrushchev in 1964, as it was a private residence registered in the name of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. It became an Israeli ministry building, but is now “in decay”, and its return to Russian control was the subject of talks between Putin and Ariel Sharon in 2005. Russia Profile sees such property restorations as the resurrection of the nineteenth-century infrastructure for pilgrims known as “Russian Palestine”, but the compound would no doubt also become a symbol of the power of the Russian Orthodox Church, the organization which Time has described as Putin’s “main ideological arm and a vital foreign policy instrument”.

Meanwhile, tensions between the Russians and the Greek Orthodox Church are highlighted in another Interfax article:

The Union of Orthodox Citizens thinks unfounded accusations of Russians in “nationalism” and “aggressive policy” in the Holy Land expressed by Jerusalem Patriarch Theofilus III during his meeting with Russian media before Easter.

“The problem of failure to perform by the Greek clergy of their missionary obligations to the Orthodox Arabs and Eastern Christian unions correctly stated by the founder of the Russian spiritual mission Porfiri Uspensky is still important,” said the Head of the Moscow department of the Union Kirill Frolov to Interfax-Religion.

Theophilos had apparently accused Uspensky (1804–1883) of bringing racism to Palestine; Frolov in turn accuses Theophilos of preferring the “degraded, dependent, and inactive but unclouded materially position of the Jerusalem Church under unorthodox rule”.

A dispute with the Russian Church is just one more pressure for Theophilos: Israel has made it clear that it prefers his deposed predecessor, Irineos, who, although anti-Jewish (he’s on record expressing his “disgust and disrespect” for “the descendants of the crucifiers of our Lord Jesus Christ”), was at the helm when church property in East Jerusalem was leased to an Israeli settler group (I’ve blogged on this at some length, e.g here) – the deal was annulled by Theophilos. As well as this, Palestinian Christians have been agitating for some time for a greater presence within the clergy and decision-making processes, and a year ago Theophilos promised that things would be improved by now (I’ve no idea if Palestinians are now in fact more satisfied). And if all this wasn’t enough, he recently retained the law firm Carter-Ruck to pursue a libel claim against a British-based Arabic newspaper through the London courts.

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From the JTA:

Should Bat El Levy be asked at Israel’s international youth Bible quiz next week about the messiah’s coming, she may find herself in a bind.

The 17-year-old Jerusalem girl is a world-class scriptural scholar who, as it happens, believes in Jesus.

It might never have been an issue were it not for the sleuthing of an Israeli anti-missionary group, Yad LeAhim, which sees Levy’s participation in the annual Jewish Bible contest as a threat to Judaism.

Yad LeAhim director Shlomo Dov Lipschitz circulated a letter to Israel’s top rabbis last week calling for pressure on the Education Ministry to disqualify Levy from the quiz, which takes place annually on Israeli Independence Day.

…Lipschitz argued that Levy, who comes from a family of messianic Jews — who believe Jesus is the messiah — should not be considered Jewish.

Various Israeli rabbis have joined the chorus against the teenager; the Jerusalem Post reports:

“Messianics are missionaries who proselytize in very sophisticated ways,” said Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, one of the rabbis calling to boycott the quiz.

“It is forbidden to give them legitimacy by allowing them to take part in the quiz.”

Other rabbis that have called to boycott the quiz include Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, Ya’acov Yosef, son of Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Tzvi Tau, head of Har Hamor Yeshiva.

Lipschitz is a somewhat sinister figure, and he has featured on this blog before; back in 2005 I quoted a couple of articles about him:

Yad L’achim mainly targets the two largest Christian sects seeking to convert Jews – the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Messianic Jews – but also goes after Scientology, Hare Krishna, Falun Gong, Landmark Forum and other cults operating in Jerusalem and elsewhere.

“Over the years we’ve brought back hundreds of Jews who had gone over to Christianity, and we’ve prevented the assimilation of many thousands of others who had started the process by going to a lecture or two from the missionaries,” says Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifschitz, who co-founded Yad L’Achim in 1950. He emphasizes repeatedly that Yad L’Achim “has nothing whatsoever against Christians in Israel, just against missionaries.”

And:

…”When we find out a missionary is working at a company, we go to the boss and explain to him that there are plenty of ways to fire the worker without anybody being the wiser. This way there’s no trouble with the courts, the media, and with Meretz.

“Some bosses are smart, they understand, and they deal with the problem quietly. I’d say we’ve done this with nearly 10 different companies,” said Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifschitz, head of Yad L’Achim.

Another prominent member of the organization is Alex Artovsky, whom Israeli Jehovah’s Witnesses have accused of leading a campaign of harassment.

The Bible Quiz is properly known as the International Chidon HaTanach, and it was established by David Ben-Gurion. According to the JTA:

A ministry spokesman said that issues of personal belief were not the organizers’ concern and that because Levy “is Jewish according to her Israeli identity cards and school registration,” she can take part in the contest.

That of course still leaves a question-mark over the participation of non-Israeli Messianic Jews (although a recent Israeli court ruling may be of some relevance here), but one wonders how Messianics could be excluded but not other Jews who choose not to follow the usual forms of Judaism, or who are non-religious – a Messianic advocate quoted by the Post points to the Lubavitch Messianists, who believe that the late Menachem Schneerson is the messiah. And is it not unfair anyway for the Israeli Education Ministry to organize a competition with a prize which is not open to non-Jewish Israelis?

(Note on names: Yad LeAhim and Yad L’Achim appear to be same organization. There is, though, also another anti-“missionary” group called Lev L’Achim, which I blogged on here.)

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WND touts the upcoming “Southern California Strategic Perspectives Conference“:

WND founder Joseph Farah joins “Left Behind” author Tim LaHaye, former terrorist Walid Shoebat, evangelist Ray Comfort, best-selling author Joel Rosenberg, Koinonia Institute founder Chuck Missler and more…

Other presenters will include Gen. Shimon Erem of the Israel Defense Forces, radio commentator and author Paul McGuire and archeologist Bob Cornuke.

The conference takes place at Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills and is jointly sponsored by the Koinonia Institute and radio station KBRT.

Most of these characters, of course, need no introduction, although it’s fun to see them lined up together. Perhaps there will be a learned debate between LaHaye and Cornuke on the location of Noah’s ark: LaHaye once wrote a paperback entitled The Ark on Ararat, while Cornuke (whose archaeological qualifications come from Louisiana Baptist University) insists that he found it on Mount Suleiman in Iran. Maybe someone will give Shoebat the chance to clarify some of the weird inconsistencies in his account of his past as a terrorist, or ask him about his recent threats to sue those who have suggested he made it all up. And if we’re really lucky, Ray Comfort will be bringing along his banana to compare with Chuck Missler’s jar of peanut butter; both men have argued that these foodstuffs refute the theory of evolution (see here).

The elderly Shimon Erem, meanwhile, is apparently “considered by many as the ‘patriarch’ of the L.A. Israeli community”, and he liaises with Christian Zionists through the “Israel Christian Nexus“, through which he exhorts Christians to support Israel because “we are on the side of God — and God supports Israel”. According to the programme he will speak on “Israel at 60 what does the future hold” (sic for punctuation); this could be interesting, since unlike LaHaye he presumably doesn’t believe “the future” involves Israel being tricked by the anti-Christ, millions of Jews being slaughtered during the Last Days, and the survivors becoming Christians.

I covered Rosenberg’s apocalyptic ruminations just recently, while Chuck Missler’s Koinonia Institute organised the Christian Zionist tour to Israel which I blogged on a few months ago.

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At Talk to Action.

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The new Private Eye (1209 p. 7) reports on a peace initiative in Sudan led by Lord Ahmed and Yvonne Ridley, and supposedly launched on behalf of British Muslims. Alas, the signs are not good:

Bizarrely, Ahmed and Ridley were stewarded around Khartoum and Darfur by David Hoile, whom older readers may recall from the 1980s as a noisy Conservative student famous for wearing “Hang Nelson Mandela” stickers. Having allied himself with an exotic assortment of rebels and terrorists over the years – the Nicaraguan Contras, Unita in Angola, Renamo in Mozambique – he now works as an adviser and apologist for the Sudanese government, mainly through his European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council in London.

And readers not old enough to recall his 1980s exploits might at least remember his 2001 spat with the Guardian, after the paper printed the claim that he had worn a “Hang Mandela” t-shirt; Hoile insisted it was untrue, and the Guardian issued a correction:

…There is no evidence that Dr Hoile ever wore a ‘Hang Mandela’ T-shirt…Furthermore, Dr Hoile wishes to say equally categorically that at no time did he propose a motion at Warwick University that ‘Nelson Mandela is a terrorist and should be hanged’ nor would he have done so.

A few days later an old photograph emerged showing Hoile sporting a “Hang Mandela” sticker. The Guardian’s readers’ editor Ian Mayes gives further details:

I rang up Dr Hoile on the day of publication and suggested that he owed the Guardian an apology. Dr Hoile apologised profusely to me for any “embarrassment” he had caused me personally. He insisted, however, that word for word, the correction remained correct. He had absolutely no recollection of wearing anything of the kind shown in the photograph, but he had known beyond any doubt that he had not worn a Hang Mandela T-shirt.

Hoile’s adventures are also recounted in Conservative Radicalism, a book on the libertarian right in the UK written by one of the movement’s exponents, Timothy Evans (pp. 40–41):

In May 1985 David Hoile outraged many outside the FCS [Federation of Conservative Students] by going on a secret fact-finding mission to Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua…As well as spending eight days on patrol with Nicaraguan Contras, Hoile told of how he had carried a Kalashnikov, adding: ‘it was a very enjoyable experience’…The Guardian story carried a photograph of Hoile at a Contra camp surrounded by armed soldiers…

The Rhodesian-born Hoile was an FCS vice-president, and he was also involved with the Libertarian Alliance, whose current leader, Sean Gabb, shares his enthusiasm for Sudan. A 1987 Guardian Diary piece also makes a link with the South African Embassy in London:

…Between 6pm and 8pm tomorrow some 150 selected members of the Young Conservatives will be guests at the South African Embassy for a drinks party. According to the invitation, the host is the Counsellor at the Embassy, a Mr. C. Raubenheimer, and the shindig is to mark the departure of a Mr. P. Goossen…The invitation list was drawn up with the help of David Hoyle [sic], chairman of the Conservative Student Foreign Affairs Group, who devotes a lot of his time arranging support for the Nicaraguan contras. (1)

Among those invited were Andrew Rosindell (misspelt as “Rosendale”), now an MP but then chairman of the Greater London Young Conservatives (the GLYCs had sent a delegation to meet independent student groups in South Africa in 1985) and a certain Paul Staines.

I discussed some of this in February.

(1) Edward Vulliamy, “People Diary”, in The Guardian, 24 September 1987.

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New wife was Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa

One of the more interesting African neo-Pentecostal leaders is the Ghanaian Archbishop Nicholas Duncan Williams, founder of Action Faith Ministries International. Duncan Williams, who preaches a message of prosperity and success, underwent a turbulent divorce and remarriage to his first wife Francisca between 1998 and 2001, and their second marriage fell apart in 2005 despite interventions from T.D. Jakes and Morris Cerullo. Duncan Williams has now married for a third time, and this time the bride is someone different. Joy Online reports:

…Then last Saturday April 19, 2008, news came out that Archbishop Duncan-Williams was remarrying in Maryland in the United States of America.

He got married to a successful African American public official and entrepreneur, Ms. Rosa Whitaker, who wields so much influence in the United States and across Africa as the Chief Executive Officer of The Whitaker Group.

That the new wife is American is not surprising – Duncan Williams has been mainly based in the USA for the past few years.

The Whitaker Group website has some background on the new wife:

TWG was founded by Rosa Whitaker, the first-ever Assistant US Trade Representative for Africa under the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and William J. Clinton. Prior to founding TWG, she was an architect of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and worked on World Trade Organization (WTO) and other trade initiatives directly under the current Chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, Charles B. Rangel, and the current President of the World Bank, Ambassador Robert B. Zoellick. With more than 25 years of Africa experience, Ms. Whitaker has an extensive network of high-level contacts in the U.S. government and business community as well as public and private sectors throughout Africa.

Whitaker’s clients have included President Museveni of Uganda; at least one commentator there is sniffy about her efforts for AGOA:

Ugandans should have a special interest in Ms Rosa Whitaker; not only because she was the assistant United States trade representative to Africa when AGOA sounded like a sub-county in heaven, but also because through her company, the Whitaker Group, she was later to be employed by the Uganda government as the country’s AGOA consultant, some kind of USA-based market scout for Ugandan goods, with a thinly veiled role as spinner for Museveni’s politics.

Ghanaweb adds criticism from the other side of the continent:

President J. A. Kufuor has engaged another American lady, this time an African American, as a Special Advisor on AGOA. Her name is Rosa Whitaker, and she is paid a whopping US$300,000.00…per year, effective March 2005 when she signed the contract with the Government of Ghana.

…Whitaker stands out as an example why Washington officials are increasingly debating what constitutes a conflict of interest in such comings and goings. Whitaker set up the first in a series of business relationships with African leaders and countries while still working as the U.S trade representative’s top official for Africa, according to our sources, correspondence and other documents obtained by the LA Times. By March, she had signed the contract with Ghana, also for $300,000 a year, to consult on the law, known as the African Growth and Opportunity Act or AGOA. “It looks like she’s trading off on her expertise and credentials and in a really blatant way”, said Larry Noble, head of the Centre for Responsible Politics, a Washington watchdog group. Whitaker said her private pursuits were above board and approved in advance by the Trade Representative’s office.

The Ugandan connection had an unhappy sequel last July:

An American adviser to the NRM government on trade and investment has lost a preliminary appeal in a U.S. court to dismiss a fraud case filed against her by her Ugandan housemaid.

Ms Idah Zirintusa, a former State House employee, sued Ms Rosa Whitaker in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for fraud, unjust enrichment, and illegal interference with her earlier contract with State House.

…In the pleadings, a copy of which Daily Monitor has obtained, Ms Zirintusa further says that Ms Whitaker violated various provisions of the US Fair Labour Standards Act, D.C. Payment and Collection of Wages Law, and D.C. Minimum Wage Act by failing to pay her the minimum wage and overtime fee to which she was entitled for the domestic services she provided Ms Whitaker and her friend Ms Pauline Harris.

…The court found that Ms Whitaker falsely promised Ms Zirintusa that if she accepted her offer of employment, the American lobbyist would provide payments for the care and support of the accuser’s family in Uganda.

Whitaker – rather shabbily – offered the defence that “Ms Zirintusa could not sustain her claims because she was not legally permitted to work in the United States”.

Duncan Williams (whom I discussed here on Talk to Action) teaches that prosperity comes through divine laws of sowing and reaping, and that a pastor should manifest success in his personal lifestyle. A high-flying businesswoman is certainly an appropriate catch; and for her being married to a man of God will perhaps have the added bonus of dampening controversy over TWG.

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