TBR News May 11, 2020

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. May 10, 2020: Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it. “
Comment for May 11, 2020:”In Europe today, especially in Germany, there is a growing belief that the coronavirus is a stone fraud. This does not mean that it is a stone fraud but that a large number of people believe it is. The lock-downs and, in America, the extraordinary economic chaos, is creating a rising tide of anti-government hostility and as a spin-off, the rumor that the entire virus business is a fake, designed for economic and public control. Time always tells in such things and there are elements of the affair that indeed are indicitaive of probably fraud.”

The Table of Contents
• Explainer: What’s at stake in Supreme Court fight over Trump financial records
• Has Big Brother already gone way too far? An analysis of American domestic spying
• Facebook Removes News Outlets in Latest Orwellian Purge
• Germany: Politicians worry about radicalization at anti-lockdown protests
• What is the Shroud of Turin? Is it genuine or a fake?

Explainer: What’s at stake in Supreme Court fight over Trump financial records
May 11, 2020
by Lawrence Hurley and Matt Scuffham
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday considers three blockbuster cases concerning efforts by the Democratic-led House of Representatives and a grand jury working with a prosecutor in New York City to obtain copies of President Donald Trump’s financial records.
Unlike recent presidents, Trump has refused to disclose his tax returns and other materials that would shed light on the scope of his wealth and his family-run real estate business. The cases test the limits of presidential power in relation to Congress and state prosecutors.
Here is a look at what is at stake in the cases.
WHAT ARE THE THREE CASES?
Two of the three cases concern attempts by House committees to enforce subpoenas seeking Trump’s financial records from three businesses: Trump’s longtime accounting firm Mazars LLP and two banks, Deutsche Bank(DBKGn.DE) and Capital One(COF.N).
The Supreme Court has consolidated these two cases and will hear them together in a scheduled one-hour argument.
The other case concerns another subpoena issued to Mazars for similar information, including tax returns, but this one was issued as part of a grand jury investigation into Trump being carried out in New York City. The justices will hear a second one-hour oral argument in this case.
Rulings are due by the end of June.
In all three cases, lower courts in Washington and New York ruled against Trump.
WHAT DOES THE HOUSE SUBPOENA TO MAZARS SEEK?
The House Oversight Committee in April 2019 issued a subpoena to Mazars seeking eight years of accounting and other financial information in response to the testimony before Congress of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer. Cohen said that Trump had inflated and deflated certain assets on financial statements between 2011 and 2013 in part to reduce his real estate taxes. The committee said it wanted to find out whether illegal actions had taken place. Cohen was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to charges including violating campaign finance law, bank fraud, tax evasion and lying to Congress.
WHAT ABOUT THE HOUSE SUBPOENAS TO THE BANKS?
The House Financial Services Committee has been examining possible money laundering in U.S. property deals involving Trump. In a separate investigation, the House Intelligence Committee is investigating whether Trump’s dealings left him subject to the influence of foreign individuals or governments.
The two committees issued 12-page subpoenas in April 2019 requiring Deutsche Bank to hand over the banking records of Trump, his children and his businesses. Lawmakers requested documents that identify “any financial relationship, transaction or ties” between Trump, his family members and “any foreign individual, entity or government,” according to the subpoena.
Investigators hope the records will reveal whether there are any financial links between Trump and Russia’s government, sources familiar with the probe said. That would include whether any loans to Trump by Deutsche Bank were back-stopped by Russian entities – a financial arrangement that can be considered a form of insurance, the sources said.
Senior sources within Deutsche Bank have denied any Russian connections to loans it made to Trump.
Deutsche Bank was the only major lender to conduct business with Trump in recent years – doing so despite the fact that he defaulted on loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars the German bank made to him between 2004 and 2008.
At the time of his January 2017 inauguration, Trump owed Deutsche Bank around $350 million, according to sources. Many of the loans were granted through Deutsche Bank’s New York-based private banking division, which also lent to Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.
The Financial Services Committee also issued a subpoena to Capital One, which also had maintained a long-term relationship with Trump and has come under scrutiny for some of its business practices.
WHAT IS AT STAKE IN THE HOUSE SUBPOENAS CASES?
If Trump loses, the material would need to be handed over to Democratic lawmakers, most likely before the Nov. 3 election in which Trump is seeking a second four-year term. The ruling would make clear that a president, at least when it comes to information held by third parties, cannot block House subpoenas.
Trump’s lawyers have advanced several arguments, including that Congress had no authority to issue the subpoenas, a broad assertion of presidential power. No sitting president has ever had his personal records subpoenaed, they said. They also said that even if Congress could issue the subpoenas, it lacked a valid legislative reason for doing so and had not stated with sufficient detail why it needed the documents.
If the court were to embrace Trump’s broadest arguments, it would severely weaken the ability of Congress to conduct oversight of a president.
WHAT IS THE NEW YORK PROSECUTOR INVESTIGATING?
The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, a Democrat, in September 2019 sought nearly a decade of tax returns. It is part of a criminal investigation that began in 2018 into Trump and the Trump Organization, the president’s family real estate business, spurred by disclosures of hush payments made to two women who said they had past sexual relationships with him. Those women are pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump and his aides have denied the relationships.
WHAT IS AT STAKE IN THE NEW YORK CASE?
Trump’s lawyers argue that his records cannot be handed over because of his authority as president under the Constitution, contending he is immune from any criminal proceeding when in office. They have downplayed prior Supreme Court rulings regarding limits on the reach of presidential authority and point instead to Justice Department guidance that asserts that a sitting president cannot be indicted or prosecuted. In a lower court hearing, Trump’s lawyers went so far as to argue that law enforcement officials would not have the power to investigate Trump even if he shot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue.
Vance has countered that his investigation is at an early stage and that there is a risk that documents would be lost if prosecutors cannot access them now.
Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Matt Scuffham; Editing by Will Dunham

Has Big Brother already gone way too far? An analysis of American domestic spying
May 10, 2020
by Christian Jürs

To start with, there’s the government’s integration of facial recognition software and other biometric markers into its identification data programs. The FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is a $1 billion boondoggle that is aimed at dramatically expanding the government’s current ID database from a fingerprint system to a facial recognition system. NGI will use a variety of biometric data, cross-referenced against the nation’s growing network of surveillance cameras to not only track your every move but create a permanent “recognition” file on you within the government’s massive databases.
NGI serves as a vast data storehouse of “iris scans, photos searchable with face recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos.” One component of NGI, the Universal Face Workstation, already contains some 13 million facial images, gleaned from “criminal mug shot photos” taken during the booking process. However, with major search engines having “accumulated face image databases that in their size dwarf the earth’s population,” it’s only a matter of time before the government taps into the trove of images stored on social media and photo sharing websites such as Facebook.
Also aiding and abetting police in their efforts to track our every movement in real time is Trapwire, which allows for quick analysis of live feeds from CCTV surveillance cameras. Some of Trapwire’s confirmed users are the DC police, and police and casinos in Las Vegas. Police in New York, Los Angeles, Canada, and London are also thought to be using Trapwire.
Using Trapwire in conjunction with NGI, police and other government agents will be able to pinpoint anyone by checking the personal characteristics stored in the database against images on social media websites, feeds from the thousands of CCTV surveillance cameras installed throughout American cities (there are 3,700 CCTV cameras tracking the public in the New York subway system alone), as well as data being beamed down from the more than 30,000 surveillance drones taking to the skies within the next eight years. Given that the drones’ powerful facial recognition cameras will be capable of capturing minute details, including every mundane action performed by every person in an entire city simultaneously, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, short of living in a cave, far removed from technology.
NGI will not only increase sharing between federal agencies, opening up the floodgates between the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense, but states can also get in on the action. The system was rolled out in Michigan in February 2012, with Hawaii, Maryland, South Carolina, Ohio, New Mexico, Kansas, Arizona, Tennessee, Nebraska, and Missouri on the shortlist for implementation, followed by Washington, North Carolina, and Florida in the near future.
Going far beyond the scope of those with criminal backgrounds, the NGI data includes criminals and non-criminals alike – in other words, innocent American citizens. The information is being amassed through a variety of routine procedures, with the police leading the way as prime collectors of biometrics for something as non-threatening as a simple moving violation. For example, the New York Police Department began photographing irises of suspects and arrestees in 2010, routinely telling suspects that the scans were mandatory, despite there being no law requiring defendants to have their irises scanned. Police departments across the country are now being equipped with the Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, a physical iPhone add-on that allows officers patrolling the streets to scan the irises and faces of individuals and match them against government databases.
The nation’s courts are also doing their part to “build” the database, requiring biometric information as a precursor to more lenient sentences. In March 2012, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law allowing DNA evidence to be collected from anyone convicted of a crime, even if it’s a non-violent misdemeanor. New York judges have also begun demanding mandatory iris scans before putting defendants on trial. Some Occupy Wall Street protesters who were arrested for trespassing and disorderly conduct were actually assigned bail based upon whether or not they consented to an iris scan during their booking. In one case, a judge demanded that an Occupy protestor, who was an unlikely flight risk, pay $1,000 bail because she refused to have her iris scanned.
Then there are the nation’s public schools, where young people are being conditioned to mindlessly march in lockstep to the pervasive authoritarian dictates of the surveillance state. It was here that surveillance cameras and metal detectors became the norm. It was here, too, that schools began reviewing social media websites in order to police student activity. With the advent of biometrics, school officials have gone to ever more creative lengths to monitor and track students’ activities and whereabouts, even for the most mundane things. For example, students in Pinellas County, Fla., are actually subjected to vein recognition scans when purchasing lunch at school.
Of course, the government is not the only looming threat to our privacy and bodily integrity. As with most invasive technologies, the groundwork to accustom the American people to the so-called benefits or conveniences of facial recognition is being laid quite effectively by corporations. For example, a new Facebook application, Facedeals, is being tested in Nashville, Tenn., which enables businesses to target potential customers with specialized offers. Yet another page borrowed from Stephen Spielberg’s 2002 Minority Report, the app works like this: businesses install cameras at their front doors which, using facial recognition technology, identify the faces of Facebook users and then send coupons to their smartphones based upon things they’ve “liked” in the past.
Making this noxious mix even more troubling is the significant margin for error and abuse that goes hand in hand with just about every government-instigated program, only more so when it comes to biometrics and identification databases. Take, for example, the Secure Communities initiative. Touted by the Department of Homeland Security as a way to crack down on illegal immigration, the program attempted to match the inmates in local jails against the federal immigration database. Unfortunately, it resulted in Americans being arrested for reporting domestic abuse and occasionally flagged US citizens for deportation. More recently, in July 2012, security researcher Javier Galbally demonstrated that iris scans can be spoofed, allowing a hacker to use synthetic images of an iris to trick an iris-scanning device into thinking it had received a positive match for a real iris over 50 percent of the time.
The writing is on the wall. With technology moving so fast and assaults on our freedoms, privacy and otherwise, occurring with increasing frequency, there is little hope of turning back this technological, corporate and governmental juggernaut. Even trying to avoid inclusion in the government’s massive identification database will be difficult. The hacktivist group Anonymous suggests wearing a transparent plastic mask, tilting one’s head at a 15 degree angle, wearing obscuring makeup, and wearing a hat outfitted with Infra-red LED lights as methods for confounding the cameras’ facial recognition technology.
Consider this, however: while the general public, largely law-abiding, continues to be pried on, spied on and treated like suspects by a government that spends an exorbitant amount of money on the security-intelligence complex (which takes in a sizeable chunk of the $80 billion yearly intelligence budget), the government’s attention and resources are effectively being diverted from the true threats that remain at large – namely, those terrorists abroad who seek, through overt action and implied threat, to continue the reign of terror in America begun in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Techniques for dilution, misdirection and control of a internet forum.
There are several techniques for the control and manipulation of a internet forum no matter what, or who is on it. We will go over each technique and demonstrate that only a minimal number of operatives can be used to eventually and effectively gain a control of a ‘uncontrolled forum.’
Technique #1 – ‘FORUM SLIDING’
If a very sensitive posting of a critical nature has been posted on a forum – it can be quickly removed from public view by ‘forum sliding.’ In this technique a number of unrelated posts are quietly prepositioned on the forum and allowed to ‘age.’ Each of these misdirectional forum postings can then be called upon at will to trigger a ‘forum slide.’ The second requirement is that several fake accounts exist, which can be called upon, to ensure that this technique is not exposed to the public. To trigger a ‘forum slide’ and ‘flush’ the critical post out of public view it is simply a matter of logging into each account both real and fake and then ‘replying’ to prepositined postings with a simple 1 or 2 line comment. This brings the unrelated postings to the top of the forum list, and the critical posting ‘slides’ down the front page, and quickly out of public view. Although it is difficult or impossible to censor the posting it is now lost in a sea of unrelated and unuseful postings. By this means it becomes effective to keep the readers of the forum reading unrelated and non-issue items.
Technique #2 – ‘CONSENSUS CRACKING’
A second highly effective technique (which you can see in operation all the time at www.abovetopsecret.com) is ‘consensus cracking.’ To develop a consensus crack, the following technique is used. Under the guise of a fake account a posting is made which looks legitimate and is towards the truth is made – but the critical point is that it has a VERY WEAK PREMISE without substantive proof to back the posting. Once this is done then under alternative fake accounts a very strong position in your favour is slowly introduced over the life of the posting. It is IMPERATIVE that both sides are initially presented, so the uninformed reader cannot determine which side is the truth. As postings and replies are made the stronger ‘evidence’ or disinformation in your favour is slowly ‘seeded in.’ Thus the uninformed reader will most like develop the same position as you, and if their position is against you their opposition to your posting will be most likely dropped. However in some cases where the forum members are highly educated and can counter your disinformation with real facts and linked postings, you can then ‘abort’ the consensus cracking by initiating a ‘forum slide.’
Technique #3 – ‘TOPIC DILUTION’
Topic dilution is not only effective in forum sliding it is also very useful in keeping the forum readers on unrelated and non-productive issues. This is a critical and useful technique to cause a ‘RESOURCE BURN.’ By implementing continual and non-related postings that distract and disrupt (trolling ) the forum readers they are more effectively stopped from anything of any real productivity. If the intensity of gradual dilution is intense enough, the readers will effectively stop researching and simply slip into a ‘gossip mode.’ In this state they can be more easily misdirected away from facts towards uninformed conjecture and opinion. The less informed they are the more effective and easy it becomes to control the entire group in the direction that you would desire the group to go in. It must be stressed that a proper assessment of the psychological capabilities and levels of education is first determined of the group to determine at what level to ‘drive in the wedge.’ By being too far off topic too quickly it may trigger censorship by a forum moderator.
Technique #4 – ‘INFORMATION COLLECTION’
Information collection is also a very effective method to determine the psychological level of the forum members, and to gather intelligence that can be used against them. In this technique in a light and positive environment a ‘show you mine so me yours’ posting is initiated. From the number of replies and the answers that are provided much statistical information can be gathered. An example is to post your ‘favourite weapon’ and then encourage other members of the forum to showcase what they have. In this matter it can be determined by reverse proration what percentage of the forum community owns a firearm, and or a illegal weapon. This same method can be used by posing as one of the form members and posting your favourite ‘technique of operation.’ From the replies various methods that the group utilizes can be studied and effective methods developed to stop them from their activities.
Technique #5 – ‘ANGER TROLLING’
Statistically, there is always a percentage of the forum posters who are more inclined to violence. In order to determine who these individuals are, it is a requirement to present a image to the forum to deliberately incite a strong psychological reaction. From this the most violent in the group can be effectively singled out for reverse IP location and possibly local enforcement tracking. To accomplish this only requires posting a link to a video depicting a local police officer massively abusing his power against a very innocent individual. Statistically of the million or so police officers in America there is always one or two being caught abusing there powers and the taping of the activity can be then used for intelligence gathering purposes – without the requirement to ‘stage’ a fake abuse video. This method is extremely effective, and the more so the more abusive the video can be made to look. Sometimes it is useful to ‘lead’ the forum by replying to your own posting with your own statement of violent intent, and that you ‘do not care what the authorities think!!’ inflammation. By doing this and showing no fear it may be more effective in getting the more silent and self-disciplined violent intent members of the forum to slip and post their real intentions. This can be used later in a court of law during prosecution.
Technique #6 – ‘GAINING FULL CONTROL’
It is important to also be harvesting and continually maneuvering for a forum moderator position. Once this position is obtained, the forum can then be effectively and quietly controlled by deleting unfavourable postings – and one can eventually steer the forum into complete failure and lack of interest by the general public. This is the ‘ultimate victory’ as the forum is no longer participated with by the general public and no longer useful in maintaining their freedoms. Depending on the level of control you can obtain, you can deliberately steer a forum into defeat by censoring postings, deleting memberships, flooding, and or accidentally taking the forum offline. By this method the forum can be quickly killed. However it is not always in the interest to kill a forum as it can be converted into a ‘honey pot’ gathering center to collect and misdirect newcomers and from this point be completely used for your control for your agenda purposes.
CONCLUSION
Remember these techniques are only effective if the forum participants DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THEM. Once they are aware of these techniques the operation can completely fail, and the forum can become uncontrolled. At this point other avenues must be considered such as initiating a false legal precidence to simply have the forum shut down and taken offline. This is not desirable as it then leaves the enforcement agencies unable to track the percentage of those in the population who always resist attempts for control against them. Many other techniques can be utilized and developed by the individual and as you develop further techniques of infiltration and control it is imperative to share then with HQ.
Mobile carriers responded to a staggering 1.3 million law enforcement requests last year for subscriber information, including text messages and phone location data, according to data provided to Congress.
The revelation marks the first time figures have been made available showing just how pervasive mobile snooping by the government has become in the United States.
The companies said they were working around the clock and charging millions in fees to keep up with ever-growing demands. At least one of the carriers urged Congress to clarify the law on when probable-cause warrants were required to divulge customer data.
Nine mobile phone companies forwarded the data as part of a Congressional privacy probe brought by Rep. Edward Markey, (D-Massachusetts), who co-chairs the Congressional Bi-partisan Privacy Caucus.
The number of Americans affected each year by the growing use of mobile phone data by law enforcement could reach into the tens of millions, as a single request could ensnare dozens or even hundreds of people. Law enforcement has been asking for so-called “cell tower dumps” in which carriers disclose all phone numbers that connected to a given tower during a certain period of time.
So, for instance, if police wanted to try to find a person who broke a store window at an Occupy protest, it could get the phone numbers and identifying data of all protestors with mobile phones in the vicinity at the time — and use that data for other purposes.
“We cannot allow privacy protections to be swept aside with the sweeping nature of these information requests,” Markey said in a statement. Markey divulged the data Monday, a day after leaking it to The New York Times.
The carriers have refused for years to make clear to Americans how much data they keep and for how long — or how often — and under what standards — data is turned over to authorities. The newly released data shows that the police have realized the country has moved to an age when most Americans carry a tracking device in their pockets, leaving a bread crumb trail of their every move and electronic communication.
The reports showed that AT&T, the nation’s second largest carrier, received about 125,000 requests from the authorities in 2007 — mushrooming to more than 260,000 last year. It charged $2.8 million for the work in 2007 and $8.25 million last year. Though AT&T promises in its own human rights policy that it will “generate periodic reports regarding our experience with such requests to the extent permitted by the law,” the company has never done so until requested by Congress.
Verizon, the nation’s largest carrier, did not provide a clear breakdown as did AT&T, but said it also received about 260,000 requests last year, and added that the numbers are growing at a rate of about 15 percent annually.
Oddly, the third largest carrier, Sprint said it has received nearly double what each of the top two reported: 500,000 requests last year. Finally, the last of the top four carriers, T-Mobile, declined to divulge how many requests it gets. But it said in the last decade, the numbers have increased by up to 16 percent annually.
Overall, the companies said they respond to tens of thousands of emergency requests annually when authorities ask for data claiming there is an imminent threat of death or serious injury. Sprint, for example, said it handles those via fax from law enforcement.
The figures come as Twitter and Google have also reported a major uptick in the number of government demands for user-information data. Twitter, for example, said it received more requests for data in the first half of this year than all of last year. The United States was responsible for the bulk of the requests.
The carriers said they responded to police emergencies, subpoenas and other court orders. They did not clearly say how many times they responded to probable-cause warrants. That’s because much of Americans’ mobile-phone data is not protected by the Fourth Amendment.
“AT&T does not respond to law enforcement without receipt of appropriate legal process,” Timothy McKone, an AT&T vice president, wrote Markey as part of the congressional inquiry. “When the law requires a warrant for disclosure of customer usage information, AT&T requires that a warrant be required — as is also the case for court orders, subpoenas or any other form of legal process.”
By his actions in revealing top secret data about personal information of American, and foreign, citizens, young Mr. Snowden has done irreparable damage to America’s national defense and protection programs.
Until he violated his oath of secrecy, we were able to watch, and track not only the all-pervasive and deadly Muslim terrorists world-wide but also keep a close watch on domestic American trouble-makers such as infested this country during the Vietnam war. Now, his actions have severely compromised various American computer companies who, until this week, were able and willing to assist our protective measures.
These companies are now being attacked by their millions of users and I am assured that many of them are losing customers at an alarming rate.
One of our most important resources for compiling files on any person expressing negative or anti-government views, Facebook, is having serious troubles.
When the FBI became involved in that project, they could clearly see how valuable an intelligence asset it could be. Their control of Internet II and their strong, on-going relationship with search engine Google paled into insignificance beside the trove of valuable data that Facebook was able to provide them.
Now, all of this valuable sourcing is destroyed, due solely to the misguided youth who, quite literally, stabbed all of us in the intelligence community in the back.
But we also suffered even worse damage when it was revealed that many other countries eagerly assisted our NSA (and the CIA, the FBI and the DHS) in allowing us to also keep records, and conduct discreet surveillance, on citizens of other countries, such at the UK, France, Germany, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sweden, Switzerland, China and Russia.
Just recently, Snowden surfaced documents to the effect that the United States had hacked many hundreds of targets in outwardly neutral Hong Kong, to include state officials, many businesses and schools and students both in that city as well as identical targets on the PRC mainland. He made the claim that these were only part of the annual 60,000 NSA interdiction operations.
One of the worst hit countries was our long-time ally, Great Britain.
The British face domestic problems even more accentuated than those of the United States. They have a large and very restive black population as well as a larger Muslim one (approximately 1.6 million) and many of these are the young, dissatisfied types so easily recruited by the imams bent on furthering religious attacks on Christian communities that are perceived as “oppressing” Muslim countries. And in the black population, many of the younger members are also targets for Muslim fanaticism. The Muslim population percentages in larger UK cities, for example are: Greater London – 17% (1.3 million of 7.5 million) and the industrial city of Birmingham 14.3% (139,771)
Their authorities are absolutely in full cooperation with American identification projects and we have had the total support of the following UK internet providers:
BT Group: operates the BT Total Broadband brand and has 4.6 million customers.The company has broadband to other ISPs through the Openreach brand. It also operates under the Plusnet brand. Plusnet was founded in 1997..
Sky Broadband: a digital TV provider that also provides broadband and home phone services. Launched in 2006, it has its headquarters in London, UK. It offers bundle services with TV, home phone and broadband services. It has operated the Be Unlimited brand since February 2013. In 2013 it acquired O2’s home broadband business
Virgin Media: offers consumers a quadruple play bundle of TV, broadband, home phone and mobile. The UK ISP has approximately 10 million customers.The company also provides fibre optic broadband of up to 100Mb, with 120Mb
TalkTalk: TalkTalk offers broadband service to consumers in the UK. Launched in 2004, the ISP has a customer base of 4.12 million. The ISP offers broadband and landline phone services, primarily through LLU. TalkTalk also operates the AOL Broadband brand.
Updata : – Updata Infrastructure UK is a broadband provider focusing on public sector markets with a customer base covering schools, local authorities and primary care trusts.
EE: Operates home broadband under the EE brand, previously operated as Orange Broadband.
Also working closely with U.S. identification/interdiction programs are several top UK domestic intelligence agencies. These are: The British government’s eavesdropping agency GCHQ. GCHQ, has had access to the system since June, 2010. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6), which is the agency which supplies Her Majesty’s Government with foreign intelligence.
Prism programme allowed GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to obtain personal material, such as emails, photographs and videos, from internet companies based outside the UK.
The JTLS (Joint Technical Language Service) is a small department and cross-government resource responsible for mainly technical language support and translation and interpreting services across government departments. It is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes.
GCHQ has contacted the PRISM program of the National Security Agency (NSA) more than 19,785 times with requests for information on the citizens of the UK since 2007 and cross-government resource responsible for mainly technical language support and translation and interpreting services across government departments. It is co-located with GCHQ for administrative purposes.
The FBI and the NSA can tap directly into the central servers of nine leading internet companies.
Director of US National Intelligence has officially stated that American law ensures that only ‘non-US persons outside the US are targeted’
Mr. Snowden’s untimely revelations have caused political upheaval in the upper governmental levels of the UK and these agencies are now making extraodinary efforts to distance themselves from American intelligence gathering efforts.
Mr. Snowden has, in fact, done terrible damage, not only to UK relations but threatened additional revelations stand well to create even more serious problems with the governments of both Germany and France.
While the intelligence agencies of these countries are both involved, heavily, in mutually satisfactory exchanges of information, like the political figures in the UK, they fear the Snowden revelations would cause serious problems with their electorates and are making efforts to terminate their hitherto very successful, complete assistance in the matter of observing all of their populations.
While many countries are eager to identify potential, and actual, Muslim terrorists in their own country, political constraints will prevent them from either acknowledging or participating in further such interdictions of their own people.
For this reason, bringing Mr. Snowden to public trial, with a conviction and a subsequently long prison sentence would certainly be in order, and one must weigh the deterrent factor with the probable adverse publicity attendant upon such a trial. And, as has been discussed, simply terminating him with extreme prejudice might prove to be the most effective course, but again, public perceptions must be taken into consideration.
Further, we have reason to believe that Mr. Snowden in all probability has taken out an “insurance policy” against termination by removing many sensitive and potentially highly damaging documents and again, this must be taken into consideration.
It is to be regretted that many of our most secret computer programs are staffed by young techinical experts who do not have the world-outlook that our older agents possess and often involve themselves in so-called ethical problems that, in point of fact, are none of their business.

Facebook Removes News Outlets in Latest Orwellian Purge
May 11, 2020
by Dave DeCamp
Antiwar
Over the past three years, Facebook has been removing accounts for participating in what they call “coordinated inauthentic behavior” (CIB). According to Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, the Orwellian term refers to when “groups of pages or people work together to mislead others about who they are or what they’re doing.” Facebook takes down accounts for CIB due to “deceptive behavior” not for sharing false information. In the latest purge, Facebook removed accounts from two news outlets, SouthFront and News Front.
The two outlets have no affiliation; the only thing they share besides the word “Front” in their names is content that does not toe the Western mainstream media line. In its effort to remove CIB and limit “disinformation,” Facebook partners with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab (DFRLab). The Atlantic Council is a Washington-based think-tank that receives funding from Western and Gulf State governments, defense contractors, and social media outlets. Some of its top contributors for the 2018 fiscal year include the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Embassy of the UAE to the US, the US State Department, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon.
Facebook started releasing monthly CIB reports in March that detail the networks and accounts they take down. On May 5th, Facebook released its CIB report for April 2020. The report says Facebook removed eight networks of accounts, pages, and groups engaging in CIB. SouthFront and News Front are included in the first network covered in the report. “We removed 46 Pages, 91 Facebook accounts, 2 Groups, and 1 Instagram account for violating our policy against foreign interference which is coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign entity,” the report reads.
Facebook claims they linked this activity to “individuals in Russia and Donbass, and two media organizations in Crimea – NewsFront and SouthFront.” In a response to the report, SouthFront says the claim that they are based in Crimea is a “blatant lie” that they are willing to “defend in court.” SouthFront says the organization is made up of “an international team of independent authors and experts,” some of whom are from Russia and post-USSR states. News Front, on the other hand, is based in Crimea, but the organization does not try to hide its pro-Russia bias.
In a press release, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab announced Facebook’s removal of the two organizations. The DFRLab refers to News Front and SouthFront as “two Crimea-based media organizations with ties to the FSB.” The FSB is a Russian security and intelligence agency, a successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB. In its independent analysis of the two outlets, the DFRLab offers little evidence to back up the claim of FSB ties. The analysis only uses a 2017 story from the German outlet Zeit, where a former News Front staffer claims the organization receives funding from the FSB. The DFRLab offers no evidence to link the FSB with SouthFront.
The DFRLab does not make a strong case for Facebook’s removal of the news outlets. The press release says, “While the DFRLab could not corroborate Facebook’s finding of CIB, it also found no evidence to contradict it.”
But using Facebook’s definition of CIB, the DFRLab’s analysis of the two outlets does seem to contradict Facebook’s findings. The pages and users analyzed do not seem to be misleading others or hiding who they are. “Most of the assets that DFRLab had access to did not hide their connection to South Front or News Front. Many of the pages wore their connections on their sleeves, naming themselves as different language versions of the websites,” the analysis reads. News Front is an international news organization with websites in English, Russian, German, Spanish, French, and Georgian and had Facebook pages to reflect that.
The analysis finds what they call “suspicious links” between News Front and ANNA News, another pro-Russia news outlet. But those “suspicious links” are just two former ANNA News anchors who now work for News Front. Facebook removed pages dedicated to the two anchors.
The analysis goes on to address the only connection between SouthFront and News Front, and probably, the real reason why they were removed from Facebook. Both outlets share stories that go against the Western narrative. The example the analysis seems to take the greatest issue with is stories that take into account Russia’s denial in the role in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The analysis also points out that News Front accounts shared news stories from Russian-state funded media outlets like RT and Sputnik.
Ultimately, the DFRLab does not provide any information linking SouthFront or News Front’s social media activity to the Russian government and does not give examples of the accounts intentionally hiding their identity. The best they can do is mention some connections to the Russian government the founders of News Front have, but it is nothing they are trying to hide.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused an increase in internet censorship. YouTube’s CEO recently said they would remove any videos that go against the World Health Organization’s guidelines for the virus. On top of the Facebook ban, SouthFront’s YouTube channel has also been removed without any explanation. Although most of SouthFront’s content is military analysis, some stories they published on Covid-19 were flagged as “disinformation” by a ministry of the European Union. SouthFront published a detailed response to those accusations, pointing out that only three of the 3,000 stories they published this year were found to be “disinformation” by what they call “pro-NATO propagandists.”
SouthFront posted a video asking their readers for support in the wake of the social media bans. For independent news outlets, reach on social media is vital for their survival. SouthFront’s Facebook page had around 100,000 subscribers, and the YouTube channel had about 170,000. SouthFront publishes multiple news stories each day, mostly following updates on wars in the Middle East. One of the website’s best resources is its frequently updated maps.
Other networks removed by Facebook in April include accounts in Iran, Georgia, Mauritania, the US, and Myanmar. Facebook claims they took down a network of accounts connected to Iran’s state broadcasting company, although they provide no evidence to support the claim. Content credited to this network includes a post promoting former presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul from 2012. Another example from 2014 is just a news story about Israeli forces preventing Palestinians from praying in al-Aqsa Mosque.
Facebook and its Western government-backed partners will continue to remove accounts each month for engaging in CIB. It will be hard to know if the connections they make to the accounts are genuine. But if the sloppy work they did on SouthFront and News Front is any indication, claims from Facebook and the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab should always be met with skepticism.

Germany: Politicians worry about radicalization at anti-lockdown protests
After a weekend of demonstrations across Germany, lawmakers worry that they are being used to spread far-right and anti-vaccine ideologies. Attacks on journalists and police have also been on the rise.
May 11, 2020
by Elizabeth Schumacher
DW
German lawmakers from across the political spectrum on Monday warned that the growing wave of anti-lockdown protests could provide fertile ground for radicalization, including from the far-right. Over the weekend, thousands of people gathered in cities across Germany to demand an end to restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Looking away and silence do not help,” said Saskia Eskens, leader of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the junior coalition partners to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU).
Resist conspiracy theorists’
Speaking with the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper consortium, Eskens said now was the time to actively resist conspiracy theorists and extremist groups trying to capitalize on lockdown cabin fever. “We have to show ourselves to be pugnacious democrats,” she said.
The CDU also spoke out about the possibility radical ideologies were being promoted through the demonstrations.
“We will not let extremists misuse the coronavirus crisis as a platform for their anti-democratic propaganda,” CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak told the Augsburger Allgeimeine daily. He added that while the government takes peoples’ concerns seriously, “we must act consistently against those who are fueling citizens’ worries with conspiracy theories and bringing fake news into circulation.”
Speaking with Die Welt newspaper, the Green party’s parliamentary leader Konstantin von Notz said it was important that people maintained their right to demonstrate. However, he said, it was imperative to stop the narrative that “all politicians are the puppets of Bill Gates and George Soros.”
FDP in damage-control mode
As for the business-friendly FDP, the party was doing damage control on Monday after the leader of their party in the eastern state of Thuringia, Thomas Kemmerich, appeared at a protest over the weekend, also without wearing the protective mask that is mandatory in public.
Kemmerich, who was at the center of a major political controversy last year when he was briefly elected state premier with the votes of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), faced renewed calls from within his own party to step down on Monday.
The SPD further warned that the demonstrations and conspiracy theories werefomenting violence against journalists and police. Over the weekend, a group of right-wing extremists attacked a group of journalists in the city of Dortmund, following two similar attacks on reporters in Berlin earlier this month.
There have also been sporadic reports of assaults and resistance to police officers. In the western town of Troisdorf on Monday, two people who attempted to enter a supermarket without wearing the required facemasks were arrested after attacking the police officers who were called to check on the disturbance.
On Saturday, some 3,000 people rallied in Munich to demand that all pandemic-related restrictions be lifted, many of them not wearing masks and in defiance of an order that protests not exceed more than 50 people. Multiple smaller protests were held in Berlin, as well as Stuttgart and Dortmund.
Vaccine falsehoods spread
Authorities have noted that not only are far-right groups a regular feature at the demonstrations, but anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists as well. Instead of reducing the prevalence of anti-vaccine sentiment, the pandemic appears to be spreading false claims that vaccines actually spread diseases or are used as a tool of government control.
Other major far-right and false claims made by the protestors include the idea that lockdown measures are being used to slowly install a dictatorship, that 5G digital networks are causing the spread of the virus, or that billionaires like Bill Gates are using the pandemic as a form of control over the public.
The international scientific consensus continues to be that physical distancing measures and the wearing of facemasks in public spaces remain two of the best ways to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and it’s resulting disease, COVID-19, that has killed over 280,000 people worldwide.

What is the Shroud of Turin? Is it genuine or a fake?

The Shroud of Turin is a large rectangular woven cloth, approximately 14 ft by 3.5 ft. It appears to show the front and rear images of a naked man and is alleged by some to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. It is owned by the Catholic Church and stored in the cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, hence its name. It is rarely on display to the public. While some Christians vouch for its authenticity, many do not. Even the Vatican won’t say it’s authentic, which is in itself instructive.
The provenance or history of past ownership of the Shroud of Turin can only be traced back to the 14th century, around 1355 CE [1]. It turned up in the possession of a soldier of fortune who could not or would not say how he acquired the most holy relic in all of Christendom. There is no record of its existence from the time of Jesus’ crucifixion until this date. That’s 13 centuries of silence. The Bible, the only source that describes the miracles that revolved around Jesus, his eventual crucifixion and the rise of Christianity makes no mention of a burial cloth displaying the image of Jesus. While the Bible does describe the burial method and the burial cloth of Jesus, its description in no way matches the Shroud of Turin. A few decades after it first appeared in the 14th century, two bishops claimed the shroud was a fake and appealed to Pope Clement VII. The Pope ruled that it was not to be claimed that it was the true burial cloth of Jesus. And remember that we are told that popes are infallible, incapable of making an error. (Of course Catholics will argue that papal infallibility didn’t exist back then and anyway, it doesn’t apply to such trivial matters such as whether they should be worshiping an old stained cloth. Papal infallibility is for important things like deciding whether masturbation is a sin worse than murder.) (Also note that Clement VII was later declared an antipope by the Catholic Church, although this probably had nothing or little to do with his pronouncement on the shroud. See this comment.) In 1898 a photograph of the image on the shroud was produced. The ‘negative’ image of this photographic appears to reveal much more detail than the actual ‘positive’ normal image. Although it’s not actually a true negative, this supposed photographic nature of the shroud’s image generated great public interest and the debate around the shroud’s authenticity began in earnest. In 1978 the Vatican allowed a group of scientists called STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) — most of who were deeply religious — to examine the shroud. They concluded that ‘The image is an ongoing mystery and… the problem remains unsolved’. They also noted that ‘few further definite conclusions are possible without information about the age of the cloth… [and] the only unambiguous means to establish this is by the carbon-14 method’. In 1988 the Vatican, no doubt buoyed by STURP’s tests and recommendation, allowed a sample of the shroud to be carbon dated by three independent laboratories in America, England and Switzerland. They all concluded that the flax making up the shroud dates to between 1260 and 1390 CE. This matches perfectly the date of its first appearance — circa 1355 CE.
Disappointed that they didn’t get the expected 1st century date, shroud proponents have spent the intervening years trying to discredit the carbon dating tests by throwing up everything from accusations of outright cheating by atheistic scientists to incompetence in selecting the sample, from failure to account for contamination of the sample to incompetence in cleaning the sample. It needs to be remembered that they were perfectly happy with the integrity of the tests until the tests returned the ‘wrong’ date.
Question: Why do many believe the Shroud is not the burial cloth of Jesus Christ?
As with evaluating any claim, one needs to look at the evidence supporting it and the evidence against. Some reasons may be very strong and some quite weak, so it’s not simply a matter of counting up arguments for and against. Sometimes one piece of evidence or one argument is insufficient to reach a conclusion, so one must look at the weight of evidence. Where does the majority of evidence point? Is it conclusive?
In the case of the shroud, there are obviously arguments both for and against the shroud’s authenticity. However I believe the shroud is not the burial cloth of Jesus because the strongest evidence, the most rational arguments and the weight of evidence all point to this conclusion. My conclusions are based on critical thinking, reason and logic, not faith.
First I will briefly list the evidence against the shroud’s authenticity, then I will provide the popular arguments that shroud proponents use, with a brief reason why I believe they fail.
Strong evidence against the authenticity of the shroud:
• Respected, trusted and very reliable scientific carbon dating has placed the shroud’s origin around the 14th century, specifically between 1260 and 1390 CE.
• The provenance or history of the shroud can only be traced back to the 14th century. The earliest written record of the shroud is a Catholic bishop’s report to Pope Clement VII, dated 1389, stating that it originated as part of a faith-healing scheme, and that a predecessor had “discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the artist who had painted it”. In 1390, Pope Clement VII declared that it was not to be claimed that it was the true burial cloth of Jesus.
• The Bible gives clear details of Jesus’ burial cloth — linen strips and a separate cloth for the head — that clearly conflicts with the shroud, which is one large rectangular piece.
‘Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.’ [Jn 19:40]
‘So Peter… reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter… went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.’ [Jn 20:3-7]
‘Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves…’ [Lk 24:12]
Note also that Jesus was wrapped buried ‘in accordance with Jewish burial customs’. Jesus was not the only person in the Bible to rise from the dead, so did Lazarus, and following Jewish burial customs he was also wrapped in strips of linen:
‘The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”‘ [Jn 11:44]
• The Bible described 75 to 100 pounds of spices being wrapped in the burial cloth. No traces of spices have been found on the shroud. [Jn 19:40]
• The Bible quotes Jesus as saying there are nail holes in his hands from the crucifixion. By contrast the shroud image has no wounds in his hands but one in his wrist. [Jn 20:24-27]
• No examples of the shroud linen’s complex herringbone twill weave date from the first century. However the weave was used in Europe in the Middle Ages, coincidentally when the shroud first appeared.
• The clear implication of all three synoptic gospels is that the material was bound tightly round the body, yet the Shroud of Turin shows an image made by simply lying a linen shroud on top of the front of the body, over the head and down the back. There is a lack of wrap-around distortions that would be expected if the cloth had enclosed an actual three-dimensional object like a human body. Thus the cloth was never used to wrap a body as described in the Bible. If the image had been formed when the cloth was around Jesus’ corpse it would have been distorted when the cloth was flattened out.
• There are serious anatomical problems with the image, such as the height of the body, length of limbs, ears missing, front and back images not matching, hair hanging the wrong way etc. (More details further in the article.)
• There is no blood on the shroud: all the forensic tests specific for blood, and only blood, have failed. There is no trace of sodium, chlorine or potassium, which blood contains in high amounts and which would have been present if the stains were truly blood. The alleged bloodstains are unnaturally picture-like. Real blood spreads in cloth and mats on hair, and does not form perfect rivulets and spiral flows. Also, dried “blood” (as on the arms) has been implausibly transferred to the cloth. The alleged blood remains bright red, unlike genuine blood that blackens with age. All the wounds, made at different times according to the Gospel accounts, appear as if still bleeding, even though blood does not generally flow after death. A corpse does not bleed, however it can leak blood through an open wound due to gravity. This could explain some blood but not all the bleeding wounds or the unexpected detail in the blood flow.
• The Bible [John 19:40] indicates that Jesus’ burial followed Jewish customs. Thus, Joseph of Arimethea would have washed the body. Since he had time to wrap in the spices, he would have had time to wash it. The body shown in the shroud was not washed.
• Microscopic analysis showes significant traces of what could be paint pigment on image areas.
Circumstantial evidence against the authenticity of the shroud:
• The shroud surfaced in France exactly at the height of the ‘holy relic’ craze, the collection of patently false relics relating to Jesus. Not one such relic has ever been proved to be genuine, and the faking of relics was rife at this time. There were at least between 26 and 40 ‘authentic’ burial shrouds scattered throughout the abbeys of Europe, of which the Shroud of Turin was just one. One source writes that ‘In medieval Europe alone, there were “at least forty-three ‘True Shrouds”‘ (Humber 1978, 78)’.
• There is no mention of a miraculously imaged Shroud in the New Testament or any early Christian writings. Surely, given the desire for miraculous proof of the divine nature of Jesus, such a relic would have rated a mention? The image on the cloth would presumably have been at its brightest and most obvious. So why don’t the gospels, who mentioned the linen used to wrap the body, bother to mention this miraculous image? The most obvious answer is that you can’t write about an image that isn’t there.
• The image on the shroud has his hands neatly folded across his genitals. A real body lying limp could not have this posture. Your arms are not long enough to cross your hands over your pelvis while keeping your shoulders on the floor. To achieve this the body can not lie flat, yet Jewish burial tradition did not dictate that a body must be hunched up so as to cover the genitals before wrapping in the shroud. The most obvious answer is that the artist knew the image would be displayed and didn’t want to offend his audience or have to guess what the genitals of Jesus would look like. A dead body wrapped from head to toe in an opaque cloth wouldn’t be concerned with modesty since he wasn’t actually naked. He was well covered.
• The Vatican, the one organisation with a vested interest in its authenticity, refuses to say the shroud is authentic. The Vatican has performed more tests on it than any other group, it has more documentary evidence on its history than any other group and it also has the Pope, God’s representative here on earth. Surely he could ask God if it’s a fake? Perhaps he has. Perhaps the Vatican’s silence on this matter is telling? Actually Pope John Paul II is on record as saying, “The Church has no specific competence to pronounce on these questions. She entrusts to scientists the task of continuing to investigate”. Say what now? “No specific competence” to have an opinion on the origin of a dirty piece of cloth, but you can’t shut them up regarding the origin of the universe and life. The conservative Catholic Encyclopedia actually argues that the shroud is probably not authentic.
Now to the popular arguments that shroud proponents use, with a brief reason why I believe they fail.
Weak evidence put forward for the authenticity of the shroud:
• ‘The shroud’s image appears to show a crucified man’. This is true, but then magicians appear to cut people in half too. Appearances can be deceptive. Even if this was truly a crucified man, there is no way you could prove it was Jesus.
• ‘There is the exact number of lashes from a whipping on the back as stated in the Bible’. Nowhere in the Bible is the number of lashes that Jesus received mentioned. Thus it is impossible to say that the shroud wounds match that of Jesus. This is pure invention.
• ‘The image on the shroud matches the Biblical account of Jesus’ crucifixion’. As detailed above, the Bible completely conflicts with the shroud image, so use of this argument is dishonest.
• ‘We can also see a large blood stain and elliptical wound on the person’s right side (remember, in a negative imprint left and right are reversed)’. No, they’re not. Left and right are reversed in a mirror image, but not in a negative image. This confusion aside, the Bible says that Jesus was pierced with a spear, but it does not say which side. Thus arguments that attempt to say it does and that this matches the shroud are false.
• ‘The shroud shows one wound in the wrist, not the hand. Research has show that this is correct since nails through the hands would not have been able to support a body on the cross. Medieval artisans would not have known this’. It is pure arrogance to assume that medieval artisans wouldn’t have known this. They were a lot closer to crucifixion times than we are. Even though artists generally painted Jesus with nails through the hands, they were probably just depicting what was described in the Bible. If the shroud is correct about the wrist, then the Bible is wrong. An authentic shroud means a false Bible. Remember also that artists always depicted Jesus with his genitals covered (and Adam and Eve with fig leaves) when everyone agrees that they were naked.
• ‘The shroud image is naked, as Jesus would have been, whereas medieval artisans never depicted Jesus naked’. This is true, but as discussed above, the image hides his nudity by adopting an unnatural posture. He is effectively clothed, whereas a dead body wrapped from head to toe in an opaque cloth wouldn’t be concerned with modesty.
• ‘The image of the shroud obviously portrays Jesus’. Rubbish. No one has any idea what Jesus actually looked like. The Bible contains no hints — short, tall, fat, skinny, long hair, bald etc. No details at all, so how can anyone say that an image resembles him? A dishonest argument.
• ‘The apparent bloodstains contain real human blood’. This is contradicted by other scientists who insist that all the forensic tests specific for blood, and only blood, have failed. While there are traces of iron, proteins and porphyrins which are found in blood, these are also found in artists’ pigments. However, as already stated, there is no trace of sodium, chlorine or potassium, which blood contains in high amounts and which would have been present if the stains were truly blood. It’s also important to realise that even if there was blood on the shroud, whose blood was it? How old is it? Medieval perhaps? The existence of blood proves nothing as we don’t know Jesus’ blood group nor do we have a sample of his DNA to compare it with.
• ‘Pollen from Palestine is found on the shroud’. This claim has been discredited as “fraud” and “junk science”. The person who originally claimed to have found the pollen on the Shroud was Max Frei, a Swiss criminologist. However the pollens were very suspicious, as pollen experts quickly pointed out. First of all, they were missing the most obvious pollen you would expect, which would be from olive trees. 32 of the 57 pollens allegedly found by Frei are from insect-pollinated plants and could not have been wind-blown onto the exposed shroud in Palestine. Similar samples taken by STURP in 1978 had comparatively few pollens. Also cloth was often brought to medieval Europe from Palestine, so there is no strong support even if pollen was found.
• ‘Coins dated to the early 1st century are seen over the eyes of the shroud image’. This claim was originally made by Father Francis Filas after examining a 1931 photograph, yet the coins can’t be seen in better quality 1978 photos. We are expected to believe that poor quality photos showed not just coins, but enough detail to determine when they were minted. Another problem with the coins is explaining why they were placed on the eyes. There was no such Jewish custom in 1st century Palestine. The claim of some believers to see coins must be weighed against the claim of others to also see nails, a spear, a sponge on a reed, a crown of thorns, a hammer, scourges, tongs, dice, flowers etc on the shroud. Even most shroud researchers reject these claims as simply an example of an overactive imagination, as do I.
• ‘STURP scientists authenticated the shroud’. No, they didn’t. They merely concluded that ‘The image is an ongoing mystery and… the problem remains unsolved’. That said, it’s unfortunate that almost all of those that made up this group were deeply religious, and many were not specialised in the field they investigated. The group consisted of 40 US scientists, made up of 39 devout believers and 1 agnostic. The makeup of this group was stacked and very biased towards authenticating the shroud, and therefore their claims must be taken with an extremely large grain of salt. The common belief that STURP scientists authenticated the shroud is no doubt based on ‘authenticity’ statements some of the scientists publicly made before they had even examined the shroud, such as: ‘I believe it through the eyes of faith, and as a scientist I have seen evidence that it could be His shroud’. However they were unable to authenticate or date the shroud. Even if their conclusions that the shroud was not a simple fake were beyond reproach, given the scientific tools they had available at the time (1978), science has advanced greatly since then. Carbon dating in 1988, a more invasive and accurate test, dated the shroud to between 1260 and 1390 CE. STURP’s results have been superseded. That is the nature of science.
• ‘The shroud contains a negative of the image, and medieval artisans knew nothing of photography’. The shroud image is NOT a true photographic negative but only an apparent one — a faux-photographic negative. The “positive” image shows a figure with white hair and beard, the opposite of what would be expected for a Palestinian Jew in his thirties. Medieval artisans need know nothing of photography since it’s not photographic.
• ‘It’s impossible to reproduce an image with shroud-like qualities’. False. Joe Nickell constructed one using a rubbing technique on a bas-relief model, using the pigments, tools and techniques available in the Middle Ages. The statement that we cannot make such an image is simply false propaganda. Faux-negative images are automatically produced by an artistic rubbing technique. Also as noted in the following section of this article, scientist Luigi Garlaschelli made a very convincing reproduction of the shroud in 2009.
• ‘The image contains 3D information’. The quality of this information is often exaggerated or misinterpreted. Also if the image was produced using a bas-relief method, 3D information would be expected.
• There are no brush strokes on the image’. Probably true, but if the image was produced by rubbing as for a bas-relief, then there wouldn’t be.
• ‘The blood flows and anatomical details are accurate and beyond the knowledge of medieval artisans’. On the contrary, as described above, there are serious anatomical problems with the image. Also as detailed above, the blood flows are completely unrealistic. Blood does not flow from a corpse and real blood spreads in cloth and mats in hair. Also medieval artisans would have been intimately familiar with blood and dead bodies compared to the sheltered life that we in the 21st century lead. The Black Death occurred during the 14th century so blood and death would have surrounded those living during this time.
• References to the shroud can be found prior to the Middle Ages’. This claim usually refers to the ‘Image of Edessa’, a holy relic allegedly found in 554 CE in Edessa. It was a square or rectangle of cloth on which it was alleged the face of Jesus was imprinted. Some try to claim that the shroud and the ‘Image of Edessa’ are one and the same. Yet it did not contain a full body image, only the face, and this legend actually began when Jesus was still alive, so it can’t be referring to the shroud. Another image in the Hungarian Pray Manuscript is equally problematic. There are no reputable shroud references that don’t conflict with what we know about the shroud, prior to 1355 CE.
I have summarised the evidence both for and against the shroud’s authenticity. I conclude that the weight and strength of evidence against the shroud’s authenticity is overwhelming, whereas the evidence supporting the shroud is almost non-existence, and circumstantial at best.
How was the Shroud image formed?
Question: How do you think the image on the Shroud was formed?
To be honest I don’t know. But if I had to pick the most promising method, I would say it could have been constructed using a rubbing technique on a bas-relief model. According to my dictionary ‘bas-relief’ means: a sculptural relief that projects very little from the background. Also called low-relief’. Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI, formerly CSICOP) and author of Inquest on the Shroud of Turin and Detecting Forgery, demonstrated this technique using a bas-relief and the pigments and tools available in the Middle Ages. “After experimenting with various techniques, the shroud artist would have prepared a suitable mixture of pigments and tempera binder, moulded a wet linen sheet over the bas-relief he had constructed, and using a dauber (also termed a pounce or tamper) apply the mixture to the surface of the linen. Methods for creating similar images are known and these methods were widely known in the Middle Ages. Faux-negative images are automatically produced by an artistic rubbing technique.” The July 2005 issue of Science & Vie (Science and Life) magazine also documented the making of a shroud by these medieval techniques. STURP scientists have conceded that it is possible to create the image using this method, but have also said there is no evidence to suggest that such a technique was ever used prior to the 19th century. Joe Nickell on the other hand, claims the technique dates back to at least the 12th century.
In October 2009 it was announced that scientists in Italy had made a cloth bearing an image very similar to the shroud. Luigi Garlaschelli, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, stated that, ‘We have shown that it is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud’. One media article noted that, ‘Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages. They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face. The pigment was then artificially aged by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it, a process which removed it from the surface but left a fuzzy, half-tone image similar to that on the Shroud. He believes the pigment on the original Shroud faded naturally over the centuries. They then added blood stains, burn holes, scorches and water stains to achieve the final effect.’ Click on the photo (above right) to view the full shroud.
Some people focus on this type of question, and take my answer of ‘I don’t know’ as admission of defeat. Yet imagine if someone claimed that photographic holograms were created by invisible fairies, and then stated that if you couldn’t explain exactly how you thought they were created, then by default it must be fairies. No intelligent person would accept this argument. While you may not be able to explain how holograms are created, you nevertheless see no evidence that fairies are involved. Just because you can’t explain holograms, doesn’t mean you have to accept fairies. Likewise, just because you can’t explain a shroud image, doesn’t mean you have to accept the supernatural. It’s all right to say you don’t know. And next week or next year you may discover how holograms really are created, and the shroud.
It’s also an arrogant assumption that if I don’t know how something works or how something was made, then no one else does either, and certainly not some ignorant peasant from the Middle Ages. We need to be reminded that men and women in our distant past were not stupid. They were just as intelligent as you and I, and even though they didn’t possess our scientific or medical knowledge, many could do things that you and I would consider amazing.
There is another side to this question. How do the shroud proponents think the image was formed? Do they have theories that are plausible and that would tend to conflict with the medieval date or human manufacture?
The following are the most popular theories:
• Contact: The shroud, being in direct contact with the body, absorbed the oils and spices that were on the body. This theory can be discounted since oils and spices were not found on the shroud, also a cloth wrapped around the body would produce an expanded image of the body when flattened out. The image would also be blurred as the oils soaked into the cloth.
• Vapour: The theory that the image was caused by the projection of body vapours. This can also be rejected since vapours don’t travel in straight lines, but disperse, so once again the image would be blurred, which it isn’t.
• Flash photolysis: The most popular theory. The image was caused by a short burst of radiation caused by the resurrection. This too has been discredited because the fibres in the image areas show no additional degradation than the non-image areas. Radiation would cause visible damage to the fibres (when viewed microscopically) and this is not evident. Radiation would also cause the image to penetrate the cloth, unlike the superficial shroud image that is observed. This radiation is also said by some to have altered the C14 ratio, causing an erroneous carbon dating result. However to believe that the shroud received the exact amount of radiation required to alter the date of the cloth to the medieval date of its first documented appearance would be a remarkable coincidence. There is also no evidence that a body can be resurrected or that it emits radiation when doing so.
• Leonardo: The shroud was created by Leonardo da Vinci who invented photography in secret. Although not supporting a 1st century date or connection with Jesus, this theory is often mentioned by some as the origin of the shroud. Proponents conveniently ignore the fact that the shroud had existed for a hundred years before Leonardo was even born (1452 CE).
Thus it is clear that shroud proponents have no viable theory of image formation that fits the characteristics of the shroud. When asked how the image formed, if they’re honest, they should also answer, ‘I don’t know’. Of course they could answer that it was a miracle, but miracle in this context is just another word for mystery. And a mystery is something we don’t understand, so we’re back at not knowing.
What about alleged Carbon Dating flaws and conspiracies?
Question: The Carbon 14 test in 1988 declared that the Shroud could be dated back to the years 1260-1390 and therefore could not possibly be the burial cloth of Jesus. However, there has been some new claims that state the test was flawed in many areas. For example, the 1532 fire would have effected the dating. Also the bacteria on the Shroud was not properly cleaned off. This also would have effected the dating. There was also talk of some conspiracies surrounding the testing (such as people switching and messing around with the test tubes and bets being placed ahead of time by the scientists). How would you respond to these?
I believe the carbon dating testing was competently carried out and that their results are therefore valid. It needs to be highlighted that there was not one test but three, carried out at independent laboratories in the USA, England and Switzerland. The protocols used were agreed to in advance between the scientists and the Vatican and these protocols were followed. The scientists originally petitioned the Vatican to allow it to use 7 labs and more samples to increase the accuracy of the testing. The Vatican refused, allowing only three labs. Numerous people witnessed and videotaped the sampling of the shroud and the samples were packaged unobserved by the Archbishop of Turin and Dr Tite of the British Museum. The scientists from the carbon-dating laboratories were not involved. The labs used different cleaning procedures, control samples were used to test their calibration, some tests were performed blind, that is scientists didn’t know if they were testing the shroud sample or a control sample and none of their results were compared until all three labs had completed testing. The results from the three independent laboratories were ‘mutually compatible’, i.e., they independently obtained similar dates.
Let’s look at the testing conspiracies first. The only time that the test tube samples were together and relatively unobserved was when the Archbishop of Turin was packaging them. Once they were sent to the labs, altering the sample at one lab wouldn’t affect the samples at the other two labs. Since all three labs reached the same result, they obviously all had the same sample, so a fake medieval sample would have had to be planted when all three test tubes were together. So if there was a switch, it was performed by or at least observed by the Archbishop of Turin. I think you’ll agree that this is highly unlikely. As for bets being placed ahead of time by the scientists, I haven’t struck this one before, but even if true it sounds innocent enough to me. People place bets on horse races all the time, but we shouldn’t infer from this that they have illegally rigged the outcome. I would suspect that many scientists of STURP would bet that the shroud is authentic, does this mean that they have also falsified their scientific results? In fact before they even examined the shroud, some STURP scientists went on record with statements such as “I am forced to conclude that the image was formed by a burst of radiant energy — light if you will. I think there is no question about that.” This shows that they had reached a conclusion before their tests even begun, hardly the view of objective scientists. It’s important to note that no reputable pro-shroud advocate in their numerous books and websites make any of these unsubstantiated accusations towards the scientists. None question the integrity of the laboratories. None accuse the labs of conspiracy, of fraud, of reneging on agreed protocols.
Could the 1532 Chambery fire have effected the dating? The answer is an unequivocal no. Dr McCrone, a shroud researcher, has described this suggestion as ‘ludicrous’. While the addition of biological contaminants could theoretically skew the result, Dr McCrone has calculated that carbon nearly twice the weigh of the shroud would have to be added. The 20 lb. shroud would need nearly 40 lbs. of contaminants to be added to shift a date 1300 years, from the 1st century to the 14th century. Even the untrained eye would notice 40 lbs of crud on the shroud. Also all three labs thoroughly cleaned their samples before testing, using different methods. The most unbelievable aspect of this claim though, is that by the most amazing and miraculous of coincidences, even after the labs supposedly cleaned off varying amounts of contamination, they all still returned a 14th century date. Are we expected to believe that the fire modified the fabric by just the right amount to give a date that matched the shroud’s documented origin? It would be bad enough, in the eyes of shroud supporters, if the fire caused a date slightly later than the 1st century, but to give a date that matched its first appearance in the 14th century is a disaster. How unlucky!
As for bacteria on the shroud not being properly cleaned off, and thus skewing the date, this explanation fails for the same reasons that the fire of 1532 fails. The amount of bacteria required is unrealistic, it could not pass unnoticed and the samples were all expertly cleaned, using different methods. If the cleaning methods used were inefficient as claimed, all three labs should still have cleaned off varying amounts of bacteria, even if nowhere near enough to give an accurate test. Thus the three labs should have all returned different dates, since they were measuring different amounts of bacteria. Yet they didn’t. Like the fire scenario, it seems the bacteria all conspired to return the most damaging date possible, the 14th century appearance of the shroud.
The most recent ‘explanation’ by shroud proponents for the ‘wrong’ date is that the sample removed from the shroud for testing was a patch. There’s no denying that the shroud has been patched during its existence, especially after the 1532 fire. In it’s early days some people even deliberately tried to damage it to prove that the burial cloth of their Lord Jesus Christ was indestructible. They were wrong. There’s also no denying that most of these patches stand out like squares on a patchwork quilt. The contention is that the sample returned a 14th century date because it was not part of the original shroud linen, but part of a medieval patch. The carbon dating was 100% accurate. The mistake was made in selecting the sample. While this is of course plausible, there are several reasons to doubt this version of events. For one the Vatican had already examined the shroud over many years. They knew the shroud’s surface intimately. The STURP scientists had also conducted their extensive examination of the shroud. The Vatican had already cut a sample from the shroud for examination by a textile expert called Raes, and this piece was not revealed as a patch. This fact is important because the carbon dating sample was taken from exactly the same area. It was only after consultation between the Vatican, scientists and textile experts that the sample area was agreed on. Everyone was well aware that they had to avoid patched areas. None of these groups, least of all the Vatican, would have permitted the sample to be taken from an area that wasn’t thought to be the original material. Some people have since said that the scientists were incompetent, that they rushed the sample taking or that they deliberately chose a patch, knowing it would give a medieval date. But as I’ve said, the scientists didn’t make the choice alone, they didn’t take the actual sample and the Vatican fully supported the choice. No one expressed any doubts at the time. Only after the ‘wrong’ date was arrived at and their theories on bio-contamination were debunked did shroud supporters start looking at the possibility of a flawed sample. They now insist that you can’t tell it’s a patch, even under a microscope, because the medieval repairers employed ‘invisible reweaving’. Obviously this skill of ‘invisible reweaving’ was lost by the time of the 1532 fire repairs in 1534, which appear very amateurish. Shroud proponents’ claim that medieval artisans were too stupid to make the shroud but at the same time had this unknown weaving skill that is impossible to achieve today. The only real support for the patch theory comes from the late Ray Rogers, a retired chemist and also director of chemical research for STURP. In his home laboratory he performed some controversial tests on two threads he claims came from the carbon dating sample, stating they differ from the rest of the shroud which he has dated between 1000 BC and 700 CE. He achieved his dating using an imprecise, unproven scientific method involving the measurements of carbohydrates such as vanillin. A method that was not calibrated and that used no control samples. Needless to say the scientific community do not support his results or methods. While it is possible that the sample was a patch, there is no convincing evidence to support or even suggest this.
Thus there is no evidence to suggest that the carbon dating result is flawed. There was no scientific conspiracy, the 1532 fire and/or devious bacteria didn’t contaminate the sample, and Rogers’ claim that the sample was a medieval patch is weak in the extreme. The Vatican’s scientists would have never permitted a doubtful sample to be taken.
One other problem with this tact is that if these challenges to the carbon dating results were valid — and shroud proponents believe they are — then they would apply no matter what date was returned. Even if a 1st century date were returned, shroud proponents would in all honesty have to state that they still can’t accept it as accurate. The possibly of the fire and/or bacteria affecting the result would still exist. Perhaps this contamination was skewing the result and the shroud was older still, perhaps around 1300 BC. Likewise the patch problem could still exist but in reverse. A medieval shroud was patched with a piece of genuine 1st century cloth. You can’t say the problem of contamination no longer exists just because carbon dating returns the date you were hoping for — the 1st century. If it’s possible for the scientists to cheat, it’s equally possible for the Vatican to cheat and substitute a sample of 1st century cloth for testing. Thus shroud proponents are in effect saying that they can’t rely on carbon dating no matter what date it gives. They would be hypocrites to claim otherwise.
But can you really imagine shroud proponents rejecting the 1988 carbon dating tests as inconclusive if they had returned a 1st century date? Can you imagine them mounting these arguments against that result? Neither can I.
What about the detail seen in the image?
Question: There is so much detail in the Shroud when it comes to the wounds and blood flow of the man on the Shroud. Do you think that a man in this time period (1260-1390) could have possibly created this cloth when at this time so little was known about medical things?
This question needs to be examined in two parts. First it’s misleading in that it states “as fact” that there is a lot of detail regarding wounds and blood flow on the image that needs to be explained. I would debate this.
The blood flows may look realistic when we compare them to someone bleeding on the TV news, but we need to remember that this body was dead. When you die your heart stops and normally no more blood flows from your body, however a corpse can leak blood through an open wound due to gravity. On death blood will pool inside the body, sinking to the lower extremities such as the back or legs depending on how the body is positioned. If there are open wounds at these low points then you may get some blood flow, but you won’t likely get blood flowing from wounds on the top of a body that is lying on its back. And since the Bible [John 19:40] indicates that Jesus’s burial followed Jewish customs, meaning Joseph of Arimethea would have washed the body, this means that the blood flow onto the shroud must have occurred after it was washed and wrapped. Although contradicting the Bible account, the body shown in the shroud was not washed. Washed or not, evidently there was blood flowing freely from all of Jesus’ wounds, not just the lower ones due to gravity, which is difficult to explain.
Obviously Jesus would have bled while being tortured and crucified, but once dead the bleeding would have stopped and the exposed blood would have dried. The body was not washed, and the dried blood should not have transferred to the shroud. If the blood hadn’t dried by the time Jesus was wrapped in the cloth (unlikely), then this means that while he was being removed from the cross and carried to the tomb, it would have been very difficult for those handling his body not to have smudged and rubbed the blood flows. If you’ve seen Mel Gibson’s sadistic movie ‘Passion of the Christ’, which the Catholic Church assures us is an accurate portrayal of Jesus’ final hours, then you’ll remember that Jesus was naked and literally swimming in blood. Carrying a naked, heavy, slippery dead body without touching the blood flows would be impossible. And strangely enough, the shroud image is not covered in blood. Just a little blood to indicate the wounds described in the Bible. Even if by some ‘miracle’ the blood flows were still wet and not disturbed, as soon as you wrapped the body in an absorbent linen cloth, the blood would spread into the material. The detail that is supposedly seen in the image would be lost. Same with the blood from the scalp wound, it should mat the hair, not run in rivulets. Far from being accurate, the blood flows are more like an artist’s representation of blood.
The only wound that possibly conveys unexpected detail is the one in the wrist. And I say unexpected for someone living in the 21st century, not necessarily unknown detail for someone in the 14th century. The Bible clearly states that on the cross nails were driven though the hands. Most historical literature and paintings have continued with this tradition. Yet we have since re-discovered that nails through the hands will not support the weight of a crucified body. However historical documents have also revealed that many of the victims were actually tied to the crossbar rather than nailed, so perhaps if nails were used as well, they could still go through the hands. Anyway, since we haven’t crucified people for centuries, we have forgotten the practical details and simply assumed that the Bible was accurate about the hands. We also arrogantly assume that since we didn’t know the true details, then ignorant peasants in the Middle Ages wouldn’t have known either. But they lived a lot closer to crucifixion times than we did, so it’s quite possible that some people still remembered how it was really done. We need to stop assuming that man in times gone by was intellectually inferior to 21st century man. A similar argument is used for the fact that the image is naked. Paintings from the Middle Ages always show Jesus with some sort of loin cloth, thus, just as with the bit about the nails, it’s suggested that medieval artists obviously didn’t know he was really naked. However I think you have to be pretty naïve to believe that regardless of how they normally painted him, they didn’t know he would have been naked. Crucifixion was a brutal punishment designed to act as an example to others. The Romans had just tortured him and were now killing him, are we expected to believe that they would be concerned about his nudity embarrassing him? His public nakedness would have been part of the punishment. Likewise, just because they normally painted him with nails through the hands didn’t mean that they didn’t know they should really go through the wrist. The shroud artist may simply have decided to forgo tradition and create a more realistic image, naked and with wounds in the wrist.
Of course if you still accept the argument that there is a lot of unexpected detail in the image, you then have to explain why a lot of detail you would expect is actually missing. For example the navel is missing. The body’s buttocks, chest and toes “are defined poorly or not at all”. The ears are missing. The top of the head is missing. The genitals are not visible. One pro-shroud website article explains this item away with the following: ‘The genitalia are not visible because they are covered by a folded modesty cloth by Jewish custom’. What Jewish custom, and why would the body need a ‘modesty cloth’? It was wrapped from head to toe in an opaque cloth. Also why did the radiation or whatever it was that created the image not penetrate the modesty cloth? The missing genitalia, whether covered by an unnatural posture, magic underwear or simply missing would suggest an artist trying to maintain Jesus Christ’s modesty rather than portraying a naked body in a natural posture.
And of course, as I’ve already mentioned, there are evidently serious anatomical problems with the image — “Jesus’ face, body, arms, and fingers were unnaturally thin and elongated, one forearm was longer than the other, and his right hand is too long. The man is improbably tall, between 5′ 11½” and 6′ 2″ tall. Jews who lived in the 1st century were much shorter than this.” (As someone has commented, if Jesus was really this tall he would have really stood out and there would have been no need for Judas to point him out to the Romans). “The head is disproportionately small for the body, the face unnaturally narrow and the forehead foreshortened, and ears lost. The front and back images, in particular of the head, do not match up precisely, and the back image is longer than the front. The back of the head is wider than the front of the head. The hair is hanging straight down, as if the man was sitting.”
So there are in fact no medical details revealed in the image that hadn’t already been discovered by the Middle Ages. It is simply an attempt to portray a wounded and bleeding body, a rather poor attempt. Rather than describe things that they couldn’t have known, they actually got many details wrong. Details that they would have known well. After all, humans have been exposed to the sight of wounded, bleeding and dead bodies for thousands of years. We may be relatively shielded from that today, but in medieval times artisans would have been extremely familiar with blood and dead bodies. History details numerous wars involving close combat with sharp implements, the Inquisition with its judicial torture had already begun and remember also that the Black Death occurred during the 14th century so blood and death would have surrounded those living during this time. They may not have known why blood flowed but they would have been depressing familiar with all manners of horrific wounds and bleeding bodies.
So now that we’ve established the real problems with the image, we move to the second part of the question: ‘Do you think that a man in this time period (1260-1390) could have possibly created this cloth when at this time so little was known about medical things?’
Since the image is actually quite inaccurate regarding ‘medical things’, the question now becomes: ‘Could a man in this time period have possibly created a cloth displaying a ‘medically inaccurate image?’ Obviously the answer is yes. Any fool can create an image that doesn’t accurately reflect reality. Since the image displays many details that don’t occur naturally, the shroud image can’t have formed by being wrapped around a real dead body.
Didn’t the STURP scientists authenticate the shroud?
Question: The STURP group researched the Shroud and discovered that the cloth covered a real human body, the blood stains on the cloth were real blood, the image on the cloth could not have been burned on and the image on the cloth could not have been painted on. What do you think of their findings?
The STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project) group of scientists examined the shroud in 1978. Unfortunately almost all of these scientists were deeply religious, many were not specialised in the field they investigated and they were actively trying to prove its authenticity. In their book ‘Debunked!’, physicists Georges Charpak and Henri Broch noted that STURP consisted of 40 scientists, made up of 39 devout believers and 1 agnostic. Knowing that the proportion of believers to agnostics is much different in scientific circles than it is in the general population, they calculated that the odds of selecting a group of 40 scientists at random and achieving this high ratio of believers is 7 chances in 1,000,000,000,000,000. In other words the makeup of this group is stacked and very biased towards authenticating the shroud, and therefore you must take their claims with an extremely large grain of salt. In fact before they even examined the shroud, STURP scientists went on record with statements such as:
• “I am forced to conclude that the image was formed by a burst of radiant energy — light if you will. I think there is no question about that.”
• “What better way, if you’re a deity, of regenerating faith in a sceptical age, than to leave evidence 2000 years ago that could be defined only by the technology available in that sceptical age.”
• “The one possible alternative is that the images were created by a burst of radiant light, such as Christ might have produced at the moment of resurrection.”
• “I believe it through the eyes of faith, and as a scientist I have seen evidence that it could be His shroud.”
This shows that they had reached a conclusion before their tests even begun, hardly the view of objective scientists. Remember also that the authenticity of the shroud is vastly more important to Christians scientists than it is to secular scientists. So if secular scientists may have been prepared to cheat to discredit the shroud, as suggested by some shroud supporters, then it is equally reasonable to believe that Christian scientists are even more likely to cheat and falsify their results. We are not for a moment suggesting that the STURP group has been in any way dishonest, however all scientists must be continually alert that they don’t allow their personal beliefs or desires to unconsciously bias their experimental results.
STURP claiming that the cloth covered a real human body and that the alleged stains were real blood does not make it so. Other scientists have claimed just the opposite, that there is no blood on the Shroud: all the forensic tests specific for blood, and only blood, have failed. We’ve already mentioned that this “real blood” doesn’t behave like real blood and that the argument that the cloth covered a real body is also suspect, since there are serious anatomical problems with the image.
It’s also vitally important to realise that even if there was a real body and real blood on the shroud, whose body was it, whose blood was it? How old is it? Medieval perhaps? An artist could have decided that the best way to represent blood stains was to use real blood and/or a real body. The existence of blood proves nothing as we don’t know Jesus’ blood group nor do we have a sample of his DNA to compare it with. Even if STURP’s results were correct — real body, real blood — this knowledge can in no way be used to connect the shroud with the crucifixion of Jesus. Many hospitals possess cloths that contained real bodies and real blood, but none wrapped Jesus.
STURP’s claim that the image was not burnt or painted onto the cloth is accepted. However by ‘painted on’ STURP means that there was no paint or brush strokes detected on the shroud. However other scientists have detected what they believe could be paint pigments. As already mentioned, if the image was created by using a bas-relief technique that was known in the Middle Ages, no burning or brush strokes would be evident.
The facts are that STURP did their tests in 1978, with the scientific tools they had available at the time and, importantly, they were unable to date the shroud. Carbon dating in 1988, a more invasive and accurate test, has since dated the shroud to between 1260 and 1390 CE. I repeat, STURP’s conclusions have been superseded. Unlike religion, science is willing to accept more reliable evidence.
What about 8th century paintings of the shroud?
Question: How would you respond to the fact that certain paintings from the 8th century exist that show the Shroud?
I have no knowledge of any paintings from the 8th century that show the shroud. The only picture I’m aware of that allegedly depicts the shroud, prior to 1355 CE, is from a document called the Hungarian Pray Manuscript or Pray Codex, produced between 1192 and 1195. An illustration in this appears to show Jesus being prepared for burial and the shroud after the resurrection, although it takes considerable imagination to see the shroud in the picture .It’s claimed that it shows the unusual weave of the cloth, some burn marks, the act of Jesus trying to cover his genitals and the fact that you can’t see Jesus’ thumbs, just like the shroud. There is the claim that four small circles in this image do match burn marks on the shroud, but why the obsession to show minor burn marks on the cloth that had nothing to do with the crucifixion, and yet omit important details such as the wounds through the wrists and feet of Jesus, in fact there is no sign of blood on the body or the shroud. The hands are shown in the wrong position, and in the shroud image Jesus clearly has a moustache and beard, but not in the manuscript image. We’re asked to believe that the artist went out of his way to show the unimportant herringbone pattern weave of the shroud, which isn’t at all obvious, and the four small burn marks, but seemingly ignored the important detail the shroud revealed of Jesus. Why bother getting a very minor thing like the linen right, which was evidently common in the Middle Ages, if you’re not going to bother showing the right clothes, since the people administering to Jesus are shown dressed in medieval clothes? As for the artist deliberately omitting the thumbs to accurately portray the image on the shroud, supporters neglect to tell us that the man with his hand on the chest of Jesus is also missing a thumb, as is the guy top right and the guy bottom left has five fingers and no thumb. Obviously the artist simply had a problem with drawing hands. There is also a large halo like object around Jesus’ head. Why didn’t that show up on the shroud image? And Jesus covering his genitals is just another example of artistic modesty.
It’s actually quite clear that the manuscript doesn’t show the shroud, since a simple description of the shroud would be ‘a large cloth with the image of a crucified man on it’. Yet the shroud shown in the manuscript is BLANK! Why paint a blank shroud if you’re trying to show that the burial shroud of Jesus has his image imprinted on it? The only thing that makes the Shroud of Turin stand out from any other burial shroud is the mysterious image on it. And yet this mysterious image is the very thing that the manuscript neglects to show! It’s claimed that they thought the burn marks were important to record for posterity, but evidently they could see no reason to show that the shroud had an image of Jesus on it. Clearly they had no knowledge of it. Can you imagine any modern Christian raving about the Shroud of Turin to someone who had never heard of it and all they talk about is the small burn marks and the herringbone weave of the cloth, and never reveal that it contains a miraculous image of Jesus? Without the image the shroud is just a piece of old cloth. And yet this is exactly what the Hungarian pray manuscript does, they refer to the death and burial of Jesus with pictures and text, but not once do they show an image on the shroud or mention that one could be seen. In fact no where in the text do they mention that the real burial shroud of Jesus, with or without an image, still exists and can be viewed. Why can no one be bothered to mention that this shroud actually still exists until the 14th century? People deceptively insist that this is an accurate representation of the shroud, but what it omits is far more revealing than what it appears to show.
The only other image mentioned by shroud proponents is the ‘Image of Edessa’ (or the Edessa Cloth or the Holy Mandylion). This was an ancient cloth allegedly bearing an image of the face of Jesus. It no longer exists, if it ever did. The legend for this cloth began when Jesus was still alive, and like most legends, this one has been continuously embellished on each retelling. King Abgar of Edessa wrote to Jesus asking for his help, and initially the King only received a letter from Jesus, then the legend changed to one of the disciples bringing him a small cloth bearing the image of Jesus’ face. The legend continues to change in certain details, but it important to note that the cloth never shows a full body image, only the face, and this legend actually began when Jesus was still alive, so it can’t be referring to a burial cloth.
So how do Shroud proponents tie the Shroud of Turin to the ‘Image of Edessa’? By suggesting that they are in fact one and the same, even though they all acknowledge that these references to the ‘Image of Edessa’ always refer to it as an image of the face and never as a full body image. If the Shroud of Turin was known to history as the ‘Image of Edessa’, this would give the shroud a traceable history from the time of Jesus up until the Middle Ages. Only the face was visible because the shroud was folded up, like a beach towel on a shelf. They want us to believe that for all the centuries that this cloth existed, not one of its owners realised that it was actually a folded, 20 lb, 14 foot piece of linen displaying two full length images of Jesus. None noticed that the image extended beyond the face. Just how stupid to they think these people were, or us if we are to believe this fairytale? Proponents also fail to highlight that painters’ representations of the ‘Image of Edessa’ bear no resemblance to the image on the shroud.
While there are references to Jesus and burial cloths prior to the mid-14th century, the Bible for example, there are none that could reasonably be said to depict the Shroud of Turin. The most important and respectable reference, the Bible, actually conflicts utterly with the Shroud of Turin. Thus the shroud does not appear in history before the 14th century.
Why do skeptics accept stories about Pontius Pilate but not Jesus?
Question: If people claimed this was the burial cloth of Pontius Pilate or any other known historical person, would you believe it to be authentic?
The answer to this question as it stands is a simple no. There is nothing about the shroud that matches what we know about Pontius Pilate. As for other people from history, there were a large number crucified that could theoretically have left behind burial cloths. The biblical description of the cloth and the missing historical record can be ignored if this shroud didn’t belong to Jesus, but the scientific problems would still exist and would still suggest that it wasn’t a 1st century burial cloth.
However I suspect that this question is hinting at something else. Many Christians can’t understand why skeptics are seemingly quite willing to accept stories about historical figures such as Pontius Pilate, Josephus or Tacitus by reference to historical documents, but then are highly skeptical of stories about Jesus or other biblical figures featured in other historical documents, specifically the Bible.
Some Christians suggest that skeptics are not consistent, that we demand a higher standard of evidence for events involving Jesus than we do for other historical figures. This is blatantly incorrect. It needs to be highlighted that historians don’t necessarily accept everything they read about people such as Pontius Pilate. The Bible tells us that he supposedly performed as judge in the trial and execution of Jesus, yet no Roman record mentions such a trial. Thus Pilate’s existence is more widely accepted than his connection with Jesus. What some Christians don’t grasp is that historians may be prepared to accept, on rather weak evidence, that Pontius Pilate for example, may have had two children. Pilate having children is perfectly feasible, it doesn’t contradict other reports about Pilate or known laws of physics and it doesn’t have any real impact on history. Christians then make the unwarranted leap that weakly supported claims about Jesus should also be accepted. If this merely involved the possibility that he ran his own carpentry business before turning to preaching or that he had two brothers, then historians would happily accept these claims as plausible even if there was only weak evidence for them. However the claims that Christians want accepted, based on weak or non-existent evidence, is that Jesus was actually God, that he walked on water, turned water into wine, raised people from the dead, performed numerous miracles and rose from the dead himself after being executed. These are claims that no sane person would accept without extraordinary evidence, yet Christians imply that if these claims were attributed to Pontius Pilate then historians would be more accepting of them, due to different standards. This is utter rubbish. Imagine if an ancient document surfaced that said Pilate could fly like a bird, turn himself invisible and walk through walls. Historians and skeptics would correctly state that there is no evidence that humans can perform these magical feats, that no one else wrote about Pilate possessing these powers and that Pilate himself did not write about it. They would deduce that this one document was a fantasy and could not be relied on to inform us about Pontius Pilate. And Christians would wholeheartedly support this conclusion. They would see it as ridiculous and impossible that Pilate had these magical powers. Even if you claimed that Pilate had these powers because he was actually the son of the Roman god Jupiter, still no one would believe you, neither skeptic nor Christian. The fact that Pilate was a real historical person rather than a biblical figure would not stop skeptics immediately dismissing this claim.
Rather than the skeptic being inconsistent in the way that they deal with different historical claims, it is in fact the Christian that is guilty of this crime.
Christians are perfectly happy when skeptics refuse to believe certain stories surrounding numerous other famous historical figures, and indeed, they don’t believe them themselves. I’m referring to historical figures such as Zeus, Apollo, Osiris, Dionysus, Ra, Shiva, Thor etc. Not only are skeptics disbelieving of their exploits, they don’t even believe they existed at all. And Christians support them 100%, seeing no problems with their reasoning and no problems with the scientific and historical research methods used to reach these conclusions. And yet when these same methods of inquiry are turned on a similar historical figure called Jesus, suddenly researchers are accused of being biased and unfair.
It is important to realise that these figures are not silly fairytale caricatures. Long before Jesus allegedly appeared, they were the ‘Jesus’ of their time. They were believed to exist by most of the population and the similarity of some gods with the Jesus figure yet to come is considerable. Osiris, Dionysus, Mithra, Adonis, Bacchus, Attis etc all had events in their “lives” that would later be retold in the Jesus story. The myths concerning these names all involved ‘a dying and resurrecting godman, who was known by many different names. In Egypt he was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis, in Italy Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. Fundamentally all these godmen are the same mythical being… [and] from as early as the third century BCE… the combined name ‘Osiris-Dionysus’ [was used] to denote his universal and composite nature’ [6].
Some details about the ‘Osiris-Dionysus’ god clearly demonstrates this similarity with Jesus: he was born of a virgin on December 25 in a cave/manger with his birth being announced by a star and attended by Magi. He was baptised. He had 12 disciples. He turned water into wine at a wedding. He healed the sick, exorcised demons, provided miraculous meals and performed other miracles. He rode triumphantly into town on a donkey. His followers symbolically ate bread and drunk wine to commune with him. He was crucified as a sacrifice to redeem the sins of the world and was resurrected on the third day.
If you removed the name Osiris and Dionysus from the above list of events, Christians could easily be convinced that you were describing the life of Jesus. And yet as similar as the ancient figures Osiris, Dionysus, Mithra, Adonis, Bacchus, Attis etc are to Jesus, not one single Christian believes that they existed.
Christians will categorically state that there is no evidence whatsoever that there once existed someone who was born of a virgin, turned water into wine and rose from the dead — if that someone was called Osiris or Dionysus. They will confidently claim that any rational person should be able to discern that these stories are myths, with no support from science or history. Yet in the next breath they will assign the identical story to Jesus and proclaim it as fact. The reasons they so confidently trumpeted to demonstrate the falseness of the Osiris and Dionysus stories are forgotten.
It is Christians who are inconsistent, who have different standards of proof, who correctly turn the full glare of reason and science onto the beliefs of others, but then turn down it’s brilliance when examining their own. Thus skeptics do not have to fear that they are being unfair to Christians by refusing to give their stories equal credence with those of Pontius Pilate. It’s a level playing field and claims stand or fall after being exposed to the same rational inquiry.
Of course it would be revealing to ask shroud supporters the same type of question: If people claimed this was the burial cloth of Osiris, Dionysus or Zeus or any other known historical person, would you believe it to be authentic?
But Christians never take skeptics to task for not believing that a certain Greek urn might have been used by Zeus, that a certain Roman toga might have been worn by Jupiter or that a recently discovered Egyptian sarcophagus might have been occupied by Osiris. Christians never accuse skeptics of being biased and unfair as they debunk these historical figures. Just the Jesus one.
Does more research need to be done on the Shroud?
Question: Do you think more research needs to be done on the Shroud?
Yes and no. From an intellectual point of view it would be interesting to know exactly how the image was created, by whom and for what reason. That said, this would be a frivolous pursuit. There are far more important things that our scientists could be doing. The conclusions reached, whether 1st century or 14th century, would still just be considered a curiosity by most and have no impact on our future.
If the shroud is from the 14th century, further scientific tests would just reconfirm the medieval date with increased accuracy. However shroud proponents have already shown that they aren’t prepared to accept, and will challenge, any scientific result that doesn’t favour authenticity, eg carbon dating. Is there any test that shroud proponents would accept? Probably not, as the 1988 carbon dating result should have squashed all serious debate. It didn’t.
The other possibility of course is that further testing could actually show that the shroud was 1st century after all. But how could shroud proponents accept 31 CE without labelling themselves hypocrites? They would basically be saying, ‘I will accept any test as accurate that gives a 1st century result, and challenge all tests that don’t’. Many shroud proponents already have their desired answer and now they merely need a test to return that date. Whether it’s a revised form of radiometric dating or a silly psychic channelling one of the disciples is immaterial.
Unfortunately there is no conceivable test that can be performed to conclusively prove it is the burial cloth of Jesus. None. Remember that nowhere in the Bible is there even a vague description of what Jesus might have looked like. Also remember that the Gospels that purport to describe his life and death were not written during his lifetime. They were not written by anyone that had ever met Jesus and in some cases they were written by people that weren’t even familiar with Palestine of the 1st century or with Jewish custom. Originally they had no titles and only in later years were the Gospels called Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. However these disciples of Jesus were long dead before the gospels were written. Other than the New Testament of the Bible, there exists no other written document that mentions Jesus as an historical figure. The writings of Josephus and Tacitus that mention Jesus have been shown to be clear forgeries by the early church. At the end of an article by Frank R. Zindler — Did Jesus Exist? — he lists 38 other Jewish and pagan historians and writers who lived during the time, or within a century after the time that Jesus is supposed to have lived. None mentioned Jesus, and thus we have no information whatsoever about Jesus that might be used to tie him to the image on the shroud. No one has any idea what Jesus actually looked like. The Bible contains no hints, no details at all, so how can anyone say that an image resembles him? And it should be obvious that he certainly wouldn’t resemble the tall, light haired, European male that the churches and movies portray. He was Jewish not Swedish. We have no sketches, no photos, no blood group, no DNA sample. Since he supposedly had no children, he has no descendants that we can take DNA from to compare with DNA found on the shroud. His mother Mary had other kids according to the Bible, although this is debated by some Christians, but if she did, we have no idea who her descendants would be, so again we can’t take DNA samples for comparison.
The most promising outcome that could be achieved from a pro-shroud perspective is that scientific tests demonstrated that the shroud linen could be dated to the 1st century, that it did contain human blood and pollen from Palestine, and it had wrapped a crucified Jewish man. However this in itself proves nothing about it being the burial cloth of Jesus. Everyone agrees that linen was common in 1st century Palestine, as was blood, pollen and crucified Jewish men.
At the end of the day most scientifically minded, rational people, Christian and non-Christian, have accepted the carbon dating result. The shroud is a medieval fake or religious icon. New evidence that supported this conclusion would make little difference to the devout believer in the shroud. They would not be swayed. Even if Jesus himself appeared in puff of smoke and said it was a fake, I suspect that they would merely say that the apparition was the work of the Devil.
Thus further testing is unnecessary and would be a waste of time and resources. However the Vatican won’t allow further testing so it’s a moot point.
What’s the main reason you don’t believe the shroud is authentic?
Question: What is your number one reason why you don’t believe this cloth could possibly be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ?
Perhaps surprisingly, I’m not going to say carbon dating. There is a far more powerful argument than any single piece of evidence. It is the consensus of expert opinion.
Think of a murder trial where several expert witnesses are called to produce evidence. If none of these witnesses can reach agreement as to whether the accused is guilty, then a guilty verdict is unlikely. However if the expert witnesses all concur, all agree that the evidence strongly points towards the accused having committed the murder, then the public can have greater confidence in a guilty verdict.
In regards to the shroud, we are the jury and we have to rely on the expert testimony of scientists, historians and biblical scholars. Rather than concentrating solely on one expert and ignoring the rest, we must consider what they all have to say. We have to weigh up the strength and evidence for each argument and determine whether the experts support or challenge each other. While there is the odd dissenting voice — views from non-experts and interested parties — the majority view from our experts is unequivocal. They are all in agreement. The verdict is guilty. The shroud is a fake.
Where does our expert testimony come from? It comes from highly qualified and respected scientists, historians and biblical scholars who have studied the shroud. Within each of these fields there is debate, but if we ask what single statement, what piece of evidence or test result is the most robust and the most widely accepted by the experts, a clear winner emerges in each case. For scientists it is the carbon dating to the 14th century. For historians it is the documented first appearance of the shroud in the 14th century. For biblical scholars it is that the burial cloth consisted of multiple strips of linen, not one large piece. All of these are powerful arguments in their own right. Each was arrived at independently, yet each is in agreement with and supports the others and this vastly increases our confidence that each individual argument is correct. So the best reason to reject the shroud as authentic is not simply that science, for example, has a good argument, but because the combined arguments from science, history and religion all jointly reject the shroud. All our expert witnesses agree. There is a consensus of expert opinion.
Our choice is clear. We are not experts, so the only rational and logical step is to accept the conclusion of those who are. We must not be fooled into supporting the views of others simply because they express a view that we wish were true. Scientist David Bohm has said that science is about finding the truth, whether we like it or not.