Another Mad Day In A Bronx Cuckoo Land

I really must resist the temptation to write blogposts exposing Manuel de Dios Agosto, known to Twitter and G+ users as 'Manny' or 'Sac', or other less printable terms, and get back to writing about science and exposing religion's fallacies and human rights abuses, but his latest pratfall is just too hilarious to pass over. Besides, as Oscar Wilde said, the only sensible response to temptation is to yield to it.

His latest piece of hilarity is yet another attempt to convince people he knows who I am and yet another 'exposé' on me straight from Manny's fevered imagination.

So far over the last couple of years, he has told his few readers of his various blogs that:

• He knows my address. It's in a non-existent street in Oxford, UK, apparently.
• He has a picture of my house provided by one of his small army of contacts (and which he apparently randomly copied from a Google image search for 'English house').
• His 'contacts' are staking out my house (in the non-existent street in Oxford) and monitoring my 'terrorist activities' to provide him with reports which he forwards to the 'UK Authorities' who are about to arrest me (two years ago). Apparently, Manuel believes the UK is a small country and our intelligence services need his help - or maybe he just believes his readers will be ignorant and stupid enough to believe that.
• He has my full school, employment and medical records (which he will make public 'in due course', naturally).
• That his higher degree in psychology (note, not psychiatry) has enabled him to diagnose me as schizophrenic from the fact that I challenged him to a neutral, independently refereed debate which he ran away from, crying foul.
• I am him (sic) and we are a Catholic priest named David living in Suffolk, England (which everyone knows is in Oxford).
• I live in Kent and my name is Craig - so he has lodged a 'report' to Kent Police complaining that Oxfam GB publicly repudiated his lies about me (sic).

And now Manny has decided that I am someone else entirely. I am the unfortunate woman in the picture above, apparently. ([Update 28 Feb 2015] now taken down from Linkdin, presumably because of the continuing harassment by Agosto and for which yet another of his Twitter accounts has just been suspended.)

How did Manny arrive at that conclusion? In his desperate searching around for something to lie about he apparently found a Dutch site, called Positif Atheïsm which has nothing to do with me but which, with my permission, carries Dutch translations of some of my blogposts. I have often wondered myself who that picture is of and assumed they used it because it looked vaguely like one of the ones I use as my ident, but never bothered to ask. I was flattered enough that people in Holland read my blogs too and that someone was kindly translating them and making a much better job of it than Google Translate does, and left it at that. Besides, what difference did it make, as the picture I use isn't one of me either?

I've also now noticed when doing a Google image search on that picture, that the real person behind it has a Google+ account and has actually commented on one of my blogs. Finding these two coincidences has apparently sent poor little Manny into another frenzy of over-excitements - and he's made another fool of himself, right on cue. He obviously hasn't bothered to look at all the other links a Google image search yields, or he hopes his readers, for whom he displays his usual contempt, won't bother with. Look for yourself. Do a right click on the image and select from the context menu (works in Chrome anyway).

It transpires that the woman he now claims is me is in fact a Canadian author named Esther Harrison, living in British Columbia!

So, in Manny's Cuckoo Land, I am a male called both Craig and David and live in Oxford, Suffolk and Kent, I am a wanted terrorist for whom the intelligence services are still looking, a Catholic priest for a parish in Suffolk who blogs with a Bronx ip address and has a NY telephone number, and I am a female author and web developer called Esther Harrison, living in Canada.

Incidentally, what does leaping to such an absurd conclusion on such little evidence tell us about someone who claims to have an ever-increasing number of higher degrees and doctorates in all manner of science subject, and to be a respected international academic of considerable renown who holds several assistant professorships at institutions whose name he can never seem to recall? Could it be a matter of utter stupidity and a lack of intellectual faculties, or has he entirely lost contact with the real world?

And he wonders why he is such a figure of fun whom no one takes seriously any more.

Must try harder Manuel! LOL!

On a serious note: I hope Esther Harrison isn't too upset by being wrongly identified as the author of my blog. She might also like to note that, despite being publicly told otherwise by Oxfam, Manuel is still accusing me (and now, by extension, her) of trying to defraud them. Since Manuel has identified her by publishing her photograph on a blog which accuses the person he claims this is a photograph of of defrauding a leading international charity, despite that charity confirming publicly and privately to him that this claim is false, I would think she has a cast iron case for defamation and criminal libel.

Manuel's various blogs also contain other explicitly libelous and defamatory claims about the person he now claims is her, including accusations of being both a terrorist and of harassing a minor, going back to about August 2012 when Manny first began his obsession with 'Rosa Rubicondior'. Should her legal team want them I would willingly send them copies of emails from Oxfam confirming that Manuel, who identified himself by his then pseudonym 'Michael' to them, had been informed over a year ago that his accusations were false. However, if they wish to check with Oxfam GB for themselves, I hereby grant Oxfam GB permission to provide them with all relevant details of my account with Oxfam, subject only to the condition that private details be treated confidentially. Account details can be found here.

If she or her legal representatives want to contact Manuel de Dios Agosto about it, his full details, including court and police records, if any, may be obtained for a few dollars from this sites or this one. He is the 33 year-old (at time of writing - 20 Nov 2014) living in Bronx, NY, with no employment or educational record listed. He is also listed as a student at Lehman Community College, Bronx. The college may be able to confirm his address and contact details, although, judging by the amount of time he devotes to telling lies about me online, and what looks suspiciously like trying to get people to do his homework for him, he probably doesn't actually attend there anymore.

If you're not familiar with expelled seminarian Manuel's idiocy, and his all-consuming obsession with me, I have a number of blogs cataloguing his degeneration to his present state of detachment from reality here. Enjoy!

[Update] LOL! Poor Manny! He does struggle so with the simplest of concepts. Look what one of his sock puppets has tweeted now. (See also his comment below. It's the one where he pretends to be someone called 'skeptic' again.)

Hi @positiefatheism can you explain why Rosa Rubicondior is denying the image you posted on your site is her? see http://t.co/Eq9BRAwvPm — Studious Atheist (@StudiousAtheist) November 20, 2014
Stand by for his stunning revelation that I am no longer a female Canadian author and web designer called Esther Harrison, but a male Dutch blogger called Peter van Montfoort and this is my picture. Could it be that he hasn't mastered the art of right clicking on an image and doing a Google image search yet? All those higher degrees and doctorates too. LOL!

Yes folks, there's even more hilarious idiocy to come from Mad Manny. I suspect rock bottom is some way down yet, albeit he's digging furiously. Stay tuned!

[Update 2] Splat! This is so easy I almost feel guilty using the poor little man.

@StudiousAtheist No big deal. Simple wrong assumption at Google search on my part. Who would know better what Rosa looks like but Rosa? — Positief Atheïsme (@positiefatheism) November 21, 2014

@StudiousAtheist We must allow Rosa her own sense of humour. And don't pay attention to lunatics who want to ride piggy-back on her fame. — Positief Atheïsme (@positiefatheism) November 21, 2014

Hallo Peter. Dank u voor uw hulp daar. Hij is een schat is hij niet. Hij is loyaal helpt mij en anderen in diskrediet religie bijna drie jaar nu. Ik denk dat hij heeft veel meer potentie nog. Ik hoop dat hij niet in paniek een run weg gewoon nog niet.

And even when told he's wrong, the ignorant pig can't bring himself to accept it gracefully and offer an apology, especially to Esther Harrison. No doubt his blog is still up and he's still implicitly defaming her with accusations of defrauding Oxfam and other crimes which he knows to be false. It's everyone else who's wrong; never Manuel.

Mind you, to be fair, I think the phrase 'lunatics who want to ride piggy-back on [my] fame' is a bit strong. I'm not that famous in Holland yet.

Obviously, the late Archbishop Garmendia in his dotage thought Manuel would make an ideal Catholic priest, obviously being taken in by smarmy little creeps (or 'acolytes' as they call them), but what a sad commentary on the Catholic Church and it's selection criteria. Luckily they spotted their mistake in time this time, before he could do even more damage to their reputation.

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