Excuse me, sir…

Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and saviour, Caeayaron?

Yesterday I visited the Go Green Expo, along with Bronwyn, and Daniel and Lisa Ryan. Every year I go, and every year I despair at the almost total lack of environmentally friendly products and services on display. In its place there are alternative therapies and lots and lots of “health” foods promising they’ll cure you of your ills.

After the Expo, our debriefing was at the Welsh Dragon Bar, which we wanted to check out as we’ve booked it for the Friday evening of our Conference this year. The Friday event will hopefully appeal to skeptics, as I’ve organised some tricky puzzles for everyone to solve. Don’t worry - a few of us will be there to help you if you get stuck, and you don’t need to try the puzzles if they’re not your cup of tea. You are also welcome to just chat with other skeptics. Although, if you do give them a try, you might win a prize!

Although I haven’t written about the Go Green Expo in this week’s newsletter, I have written about a visit to a Mind, Body, Spirit fair a few of us Wellington skeptics visited a couple of weeks ago (and have no fear, I have an epic rant in mind that I want to write about one of the stalls at the Go Green Expo - you can read all about it in a fortnight). I’ve also written about a weird phone call and an email I received last week, and I’ve found another doozy of a claim in that godawful pro Nazi documentary series I’ve been watching - this time, we’re looking at whether Anne Frank may not have written the diary attributed to her.

As well as my ruminations, Brad MacClure, one of our committee members, has been sufficiently incensed by a recent conversation on our Facebook page about the word “woke” that he’s put pen to paper, or rather fingers to keys, and written out his reckonings - it’s a nicely thought out response.

Finally, we have a second piece from one of the regulars at our Skeptics in Cyberspace meetings - Alistair Blenney. Al’s written about a weird cult group advertising near his house - and it’s one I’ve never heard of before, called Caeayaron.

Mark Honeychurch

Weird and Wonderful Communications

Last week I was contacted a couple of times (although not by cranks) as a result of articles I’ve written in the past.

The first contact was a phone call asking to talk to Father John. It took me a few seconds to realise that the person on the other end of the phone was a “true believer” wanting to talk with Father John Rea, a Catholic faith healer. A few years ago I wrote an article about my visit to be healed by Father John, where I talked about how he purports to heal, and I went up for healing from him myself. From my article:

John reads out a list of conditions, and for each condition he gives some clues as to who the person or people who are suffering might be. Some were fairly benign - RSI, back pain, etc - but others were much more serious, such as cancer and leukemia. When you hear something that is close to being a match to either you or someone you know, you own that "word" and it will come true. It was stressed that what was said might not be exactly correct, and that you should believe it's for you if parts of it matched for you.

The caller must have found a copy of that article on my personal website, and then clicked on the site’s Contact page and found my mobile number. Erroneously thinking that I must be connected to Father John in some way, she called me up. Despite the fact that Father John has absolutely no ability to heal anyone through prayer, and he’s likely to be doing more harm than good with his claims of prayer being able to heal all illnesses including cancer, I was polite enough to find the correct phone number for her.

The second contact is not really skeptical, but I thought it might be of interest to readers anyway. A few years ago I worked on a fun project for the company I was working for at the time, reverse engineering a type of computer file used to diagnose issues with server hardware. Although I never managed to finish the project, I did write up my findings in a blog post in case they were useful to anyone else. Well it turns out that in Russia, where they’re currently dealing with the impact of wide-ranging sanctions, someone is keen to see me finish off my project so that they can continue to repair this hardware without official support:

Hello Mark!

I have recently found your blog post back from January 2020. I find it very attractive for my current job duties. I was working for <company> since 2006 as a support specialist. Now <company> has left Russia because of war in Ukraine and I was invited to join a support company to help <company> customers with technical support of their hardware.
…
I would greatly appreciate your help in developing the tool, so that we can provide technical support for our customers and other users better understand what they have and how it works. Please, let me know if you are interested in such a collaboration.

Thanks!

With best regards,
Ivan

Needless to say I have not responded to, and will not be responding to, this email.

Am I woke, or just morally broke?

Brad MacClure

Ok, the title doesn’t really reflect this article as you think it does…

On Facebook recently a member posted a comment about being sick of hearing the word “woke”. It generated more responses than one would have predicted, and the most fervent responses seemed also to be the most misguided. Two things became clear: 1: There seem to be multiple ideas about the meaning of the word, and how it’s used. 2: It must hurt an awful lot and take some effort to change your mind about that meaning, because clearly some were not willing to go to the trouble.

All words have a generally agreed upon meaning. To you or me our use might be different to the generally agreed meaning, and that’s all fine, but if we want to engage in good faith, we need to figure out whether we are using the word the same. The word “woke”, for example, has a literal meaning of course. It no doubt has an origin too. However, those things are not always relevant to a conversation. “Woke” is almost exclusively used these days as a pejorative, as a conversation shut-down, and as a way to dismiss your own bigotry. 

“You’re just woke…” or “the woke left…” is code for “I don’t want to hear about the thing you’re addressing, and my argument is bad so…nothing to see here”. Of course, this is intellectual dishonesty, but I would argue that most people that do it don’t even know they’re doing it. They get that little shot of dopamine when their brain tells them “gotcha!” and that feels nicer than the cognitive dissonance they experience when considering the prospect of their wrongness.

Disputing the meaning of a word can have the same effect. It was suggested in the Facebook post (I’m paraphrasing) that “woke” is used to hide bigotry, someone disagreed with this, then promptly attempted to use the word to hide their bigotry. Remember too, a lot of this trouble stems from the person responding having a differing meaning in their head about a word, they may not even disagree about the important things, yet get bogged down because they haven’t stopped to clarify the meaning of the word they’re pontificating about.

I would argue that phrases like “virtue signalling” and the (now old) term “politically correct” are much the same. The truth is we all virtue signal all the time. We’re social creatures, there’s no escaping the desire and need to appeal to others (unless you’re a psychopath). If you want to influence others or have an effect in society, you need an audience. I think everything we do is virtue signalling. Using the term “virtue signalling” is itself virtue signalling. It’s a redundant term. In a sense the use of these words and phrases are ad hominem because they’re an attempt to shut down an argument with an attack on your character. The only trouble is that none of those things they’re calling out are bad character. Being called virtue signalling, woke, politically correct…or feminist, leftist, atheist, or skeptic for that matter. If you’re being called these things, it probably means you’re having an effect.

If they think they’re disparaging you with these words they’re ignorant. Somehow, we need to get the message out there, “bro, that’s not the insult you think it is!” Seriously though, education is the answer of course, but we also need to discern when someone just isn’t listening, and isn’t going to listen. Or when someone is engaging in bad faith, and just walk away.

I am a Starseed

The cheapest thing we could find was a “Light Code” reading for $5, so both Bronwyn and I gave it a go. For the reading we had to sit down in a recliner chair and let our host channel the spirits. She was guided by these spirits to first draw us a picture, and then through talking with us she would interpret the picture and write down its meaning.

Here’s my picture:

Through this process I found out that my soul comes from another galaxy, and that I am currently being activated. I am a builder (although her first guess that I make things out of wood was very wide of the mark), and I should ignore the haters and do what I want to do. Of course, as a skeptic I think this is pretty bad advice. Although some people might try to stifle you because of selfish reasons, a lot of negative advice that people give is useful and should be heeded. After all, outsiders - especially those who are impartial and insightful - are likely to have a fresh perspective of what you do, and if they’ve taken the time and risk to warn you about something, there’s a good chance they’ve seen something relevant that you were unable to see. So, no, I won’t just be trusting my own truth, I will continue to care about what others say about me.

Bronwyn’s card was a little more fun and colourful than mine:

Caeayaron – a home-grown Messianic cult

Alistair Blenney

I went for my walk a different way recently and came across a sign advertising the services of an Accredited Love Teacher offering “Loving angels close to you”. Thinking that sounded promising, if expensive, I read on, only to discover what was really on offer was - among other things - “healing within”, “inner peace” and a “more loving home”. Those, apparently, are what I'd get from the teachings of Caeayaron.

So who is Caeayaron? Quite somebody, according to Suzanna Maria Emmanuel. He is a Divine Master of Divine Love and Divine Truth, Great Divine Balancer, Highest Archangel in all of creation, Creator of all of life consciousness and Creator of all Light Grids in Creation. There are lots more titles, but this last one is most important to the work of his avatar (or channel) - Suzanna Maria Emmanuel. She is his Galactic Star Universal Light Grid Programmer, and is the Designated Universal Love Channel for the Divine Love Truth Alignment. She lived as Jesus 2,000 years ago and brought the Sacred Words to the people. 

Jesus' hearers knew that the Great Father Emmanuel was the gateway to eternal life, and that Jesus was the one who brought them his messages. Jesus himself could not deliver eternal life, but the entity Emmanuel, who spoke through Jesus, could, although these notions are not obvious from the Bible which was apparently corrupted by those spiritual leaders who desired to retain power.

But trouble originated in the ancient (and lost) continent of Lemuria, which hosted the Golden Age of humanity. Lemuria was brought into existence to bring love and peace into all the universes. The Lemurians’ DNA vibrational level was so high they never suffered from ageing and sickness.

Lemuria was set up to break a multi-dimensional time loop(?) and to test out, once and for all, whether fear energy or love energy was stronger - this was called the Earth Game. Something called “the Yahweh being” would not leave the Lemurians alone, which weakened them in the game. This Yahweh being then worked with other dark entities to take over Lemuria. Their idea was that by controlling the crystalline grid of Lemuria, they could take control of the universes. Caeayaron therefore cut the Lemurians off from their life codes to stop the collapse of the universes.

The fall of Lemuria apparently reduced reincarnations of its people (us) to become the limited human beings of today, and Caeayaron was trapped by the dark beings. Now it seems Caeayaron is returning again and creating new universes for humans to return to the realms of love and peace. People who do not want this destiny will stay in the dark realms of pain and death. So – what to do to avoid this dreadful fate?

The Galactic Federation of Light Society permits only those people who have received the Divine Pineal Gland Activations, through Suzanna Maria Emmanuel, access to the greater star realms. However it does seem there was some sort of cutoff in 2020. But do not despair! The Gateway to the Great Sovereign Universes will remain open until approximately the year 2032, and possibly a little longer depending on whether people desire love to rise upon the earth, or not.

''Suzanna Maria Emmanuel, Galactic Star Universal Light Grid Programmer, is transforming right now into an Angelic Love Channel and the Divine Universal Love Channel and will bring through enormous flows of love to the grids of the earth to bring healing and transformation to the people”

As a bonus, the web site gives interpretations of the meanings of crop circles, as channelled from HALISARIUS, PLEIADIAN CHIEF LEADER, PLEIADIAN CHIEF COMMANDER and ... CHIEF LEADER OF THE GALACTIC FEDERATION OF LIGHT SOCIETY.

And for those of you who remain skeptical of this enlightenment program, you can have confidence in the accuracy of Suzanna Maria Emmanuel's message because “the work of the UNIVERSAL LOVE CHANNEL was tested … with specialized computer equipment to see if the CHANNEL accurately brought in the information and from what source it originated…”. The nature of the computer equipment isn't specified.

But it all sounds a bit like yet another modern version of the Manichaean heresy; the universe is a battleground between the forces of good and evil, and only knowledge of the nature of the universe (gnosticism) will save your soul. It’s all rather lovey-dovey, and I'll stick with portal2012 for more entertaining cosmic conflicts and fewer CAPITAL letters.
 

Who wrote Anne Frank’s diary?

It seems like the answer should be pretty simple - Anne Frank, of course. But sadly not everyone seems to accept this. After a brief hiatus, I’ve returned to watching the god-awful series Europa, a pro-nazi “documentary” series about World War 2. Last time I wrote about a claim that the voice actor for Winnie the Pooh had secretly recorded most of Churchill’s wartime speeches because he was too drunk to do it himself. This time the claim is that Anne Frank couldn’t have written the diaries attributed to her because, among other things, much of it is written in ballpoint pen, and that type of pen wasn’t invented until the 1950s. I’ve transcribed what the documentary had to say:

“Anne Frank died of typhus in March 1945. However, the original diary manuscript was forensically examined by the German State Forensic Bureau (the Bundes Kriminal Amt). Their analysis determined that significant portions of the work were written with a ballpoint pen. Since ballpoint pens were not available to everyone before 1951, portions of the work were added well after the war.

Handwriting experts determined, after closer examination of the originals, that all of the writing in the diary was by the same hand, and the BKA determined that none of the diary handwriting matched known examples of Anne’s real handwriting.

The true author of the diary was jewish novelist Meyer Levin, who demanded and was awarded $50,000 in payments for his work in a court action against Anne’s father, Otto Frank.”

Phew, there’s a lot to work through here! We have three claims: that the diary was written in ballpoint pen, which wasn’t available until after the second world war; that the handwriting in the diary doesn’t match Anne Frank’s handwriting; and that the diary was written by Meyer Levin, and not Anne Frank.

Firstly, let’s look for the origin of these claims. It turns out that the text from the documentary appears to have been plagiarised from an anonymous image posted on the internet. The text in the image I found below is suspiciously similar to the script for the Europa show:

It might be that the documentary author created this image himself, and released it before his documentary, but it seems more likely that someone else created the image, and that the documentary creator, Tobias Bratt, used this as source material for his documentary.

The root idea for each of these claims is much older than 2016.

The ballpoint claim appears to originate from a 1978 book by Ditlieb Felderer called “Anne Frank’s Diary - A Hoax” - published by a well-known holocaust denial organisation from the US called the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). The claim was also mentioned in 1985 in Ernst Zundel’s trial in Canada (read more here, on page 80).

The handwriting claims have been made by the IHR since 1985 (I won’t link to an article on their website about this, for obvious reasons, but the Holocaust Denial on Trial website has a decent page about the history of this and other claims).

The Meyer Levin claims are even older, originating from Norway and Sweden back in the late 1950s.

So what about the substance of the claims themselves? Let’s look at each of them in turn.

Firstly the ballpoint pen claim. This isn’t a pure fabrication, just mostly nonsense - the Anne Frank website has a page tackling this myth. It says there were two loose leaf papers that were part of the diary collection. These pages were apparently written in ballpoint, but they weren’t pages of the diary itself - just pages of annotations. After the diary was written (and re-written) by Anne Frank, pages of notes have been inserted, annotations and corrections have been added, etc. It turns out that a couple of these extra pieces of paper have some writing in ballpoint pen, but the diary itself is not written in ballpoint - it was written in fountain pen ink, and in coloured pencil.

The modern ballpoint pen was invented by Laszlo Biro in 1931. Biro didn’t start manufacturing his pens until the early 1940s. So this part of the story at least is true - that Anne Frank couldn’t have written any of her diary using a ballpoint pen. And the reason it took Biro a few years to manufacture his new invention? He had to move from Hungary to Argentina, to flee the Nazi regime. Yes, in a slight touch of irony, it turns out that the inventor of the modern ballpoint pen was Jewish.

As far as the handwriting claim is concerned, Anne not only wrote her diary over a period of years as a child, but also rewrote large parts of it later on as she considered that it might eventually be published. It would be expected for a child’s handwriting to change as they mature. Given the rewrite, placing the various written and rewritten parts of the diary in chronological order will end up with a text where the handwriting jumps backwards and forwards in time between age 13 and 15 - so some irregularity is to be expected. However a 1980s forensic investigation concluded “the report of the Netherlands Forensic Institute has convincingly demonstrated that both versions of the diary of Anne Frank were written by her in the years 1942 to 1944. The allegations that the diary was the work of someone else are thus conclusively refuted.”

As to the claim of Meyer Levin being the original author, in reality Levin offered to help Otto Frank publish the diary in the US, as he saw it as an important voice from the war. Levin eventually wrote a play based on Anne Frank’s diary, and it was this play, and the fact that his version was not used but possibly plagiarised for a later version of a play, from which the money dispute arose: