Bartholomew's Notes

As has been widely reported, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka “Tommy Robinson”, has been sentenced to a 10-month prison sentence for using a friend’s passport to enter the USA illegally. Robinson, who heads the English Defence League, had travelled to New York with his deputy and cousin Kevin Carroll to take part in an anti-Islam conference organised by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, and their reaction to the news is typically bullish.

Geller:

…Tommy Robinson, my colleague and board member of SION [Stop Islamization of Nations; see here – RB], is a political prisoner in the UK, imprisoned for standing up for freedom and equality of rights under the law. I stand with Robinson.

Spencer:

…Don’t think he is a political prisoner? Consider this: In December 2011 in the U.K., a gang of Muslim women who savagely beat a non-Muslim woman were let off scot-free because “they weren’t used to drinking because they’re Muslims.” Consider also that earlier in 2011, Muslims pelted EDL members with stones, touching off an altercation; a Muslim was fined £50, while Robinson’s fine was £315.

Back in October, Spencer and Geller expressed the view that Robinson’s legal troubles amounted to “sharia inspired victimisation”, and they had asked Americans to donate to Robinson’s “legal fund” via the EDL website. However, they didn’t mention that Robinson intended to plead guilty, although the defence spin transformed this obvious necessity into a virtue:

Stephen Lennon, 30, pleaded guilty to possession of a false identity document with improper intention, contrary to the Identity Documents Act 2010.

…Defence barrister Giles Cockings said his client had displayed a ‘certain amount of courage’ by pleading guilty.

It’s difficult to see what the selective rag-bag of public order offences cited by Spencer has to do with an act of fraud. British law is quite clear: if you use someone else’s passport to misrepresent who you are, you should expect to go to prison.

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A press release from the “Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast“:

On Monday, January 21st, Inauguration Day ordinary Americans will gather with Pastors, Clergy, Lay Leaders, Congressmen, Senators, Ambassadors, and Diplomats to pray for the Nation and the Office of the Presidency.  The Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast Committee, consisting of hostess Rev. Merrie Turner, Father Patrick J. Conroy, Chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives, Stewart Greenleaf, PA State Senator, 12th Dist., Mrs. Annette Lantos  (wife of Congressman Tom Lantos, CA) John Stinson, Abby Abildness, Rev.(s) Mike & Rose Greer, Lex & Caroline LaMotte, is presenting the event.  Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, best-selling author of “The Harbinger”, is the key note speaker whose topic is the prophetic destiny of America. Representative Michele Bachmann, Dr. Pat Robertson, Jan Crouch, Pat Boone, Joseph Farah, Rosemary Schindler, Senator Roy Blunt, Dick Simmons and other distinguished guests will lead prayers for the nation.

Inevitably, the event is billed as “non-partisan”, but it’s difficult to take that claim seriously judging from the platform. Joseph Farah, for instance, is a Birther, and his WorldNetDaily website has accused Obama of everything from  masterminding the Sandy Hook massacre to sending a secret message to Muslims that he plans to continue the Jewish Holocaust.

The fact that Cahn is being given centre stage is also significant: Cahn’s religion is actually rather strange, involving esoteric “Hebrew mysteries” and such, but his Harbinger book, which claims that events such as 9/11 represent God’s judgement against the USA,  is currently a top Christian paperback.

The Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast appears to be a neo-Pentecostal initiative; a second site for the event has more explicit rhetoric about how the organisers, “Ask for America (TM)”, are “a Gideon’s Army that God has raised up” and a “strategic prayer network”. It’s not clear how this relates to the “Committee” mentioned in the press release. The event was was founded in the 1980s by the late Ruth Ward Heflin; according to a blurb (it’s not clear who wrote it):

My friend and associate Dr. Ruth Ward Heflin was often  priveleged [sic] to attend the Presidential Inaugurations in Washington DC as a young girl.   She traveled in missions and was called to carry the Gospel to every nation.  But in 1988 God called her to turn her attention to America.  I will let her tell you the rest of the story from her book, “Harvest Glory, I Ask for the Nations.”

Heflin is perhaps best-remembered for revivalist events at which gold dust supposedly appeared on people’s hands and at which dental fillings supposedly turned to gold.

UPDATE: Farah’s involvement has become a matter of some controversy – and mystery: see here.

UPDATE 2: Charisma News has also written about the event, adding that:

…the prayer breakfast’s keynote speaker will be Suzan Johnson Cook, who Obama appointed as Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom in May 2011. Cook is the principal advisor to both the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for religious freedom globally and is both the first African American and female to hold the position.

“Suzan will address issues of tolerance, unity, faith and the religious freedoms that are at risk at this time,” [Bishop Randolph] Gurley said. “She is very close to the president as an advisor, and she is an awesome lady.”

UPDATE 3: US News reports:

Senate Chaplain Rev. Barry Black will no longer attend an inaugural prayer breakfast being hosted by religious conservatives, after a petition criticizing the event garnered thousands of signatures online.

House Chaplain Rev. Patrick J. Conroy, however, will attend the event. His office says the Jesuit priest will deliver a quick prayer, and won’t “stay too long.”

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Reza Kahlili continues to make WorldNetDaily readers’ flesh creep with increasingly lurid apocalyptic scenarios involving Iran, based on supposed inside information to which he alone has privileged access. Here’s the latest, based on “a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit”:

Iranian scientists, working under orders from the radicals running the Islamic regime, have genetically altered microbial agents in a nightmarish scheme to bring the West to its knees.

…As reported exclusively on WND on Dec. 16, the source revealed the existence of a plant in Marzanabad, Iran, where 12 Russian and 28 Iranian scientists are working on microbial agents for bombs. At that time, the source disclosed that Iran was working on 18 agents, with four completed. He has now provided information that with work at two other plants, Iran has created a total of eight microbial agents, with research on insects to be used as the vector to infect the societies of its enemies…

Iran, with North Korea’s help, has genetically altered the smallpox virus that makes current vaccinations useless against it…. The radicals ruling Iran believe their planned microbial attacks cannot be traced to them, the source said. 

Smallpox, of course, was eradicated in 1979, although two institutions – one in the USA, the other in Russia – continue to retain heavily-guarded samples of the pathogen. Evidence that the virus has been smuggled into Iran and weaponized would be biggest news story on the planet – although in this instance, “evidence” is in short supply.

It’s not clear how many “sources” Kahlili claims to have in Iran, let alone why they’re all talking to a hack for a ludicrous Birther website rather than liaising with intelligence officers (Kahlili was some kind of CIA informant back in the 1980s, but he’s now a private citizen). And it’s not clear why Iran appears to be powerless to stem the leaks, despite Kahlili constantly alerting them to the fact they’ve been compromised; Kahlili cited a “source in the Revolutionary Guards” for a story about alleged “terror cells” in the USA as long ago as April.

Kahlili sometimes  prefers to cite a former officer “who defected to a country in Europe”. This supposed defector has provided a trickle of stories: in May he warned that Iran was “turning US mosques into command centres”; in July he came up with new “secret nuclear sites not known by the West”; and in December he apparently suddenly remembered “170 missiles targeted at Tel Aviv from underground silos, some of which are armed with biological warheads”.

There’s also a “source in Khamenei’s office”, who provided particularly dramatic information towards the end of the year:

Al-Qaida is teaming up with Iran to stage massive terror attacks on French and German targets in the next three months, according to an inside source.

Those targets include French Socialist Party headquarters, commerce centers and the Paris Metro rapid transit system.

The supreme leader of the Islamic regime, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, held a meeting in Tehran with four top commanders of al-Qaida one month ago at which it was decided to attack certain countries in Europe, France and Germany included, according to the source in Khamenei’s office who can’t be named for security reasons.

“Iranian smallpox” is just the most implausible of Kahlili’s many stories so far.

(H/T Conwebwatch)

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Ed Brayton draws attention to an article in the Daily Beast by Winston Ross, about the so-called “Sovereign Citizen” movement. As Ross describes it:

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Back in August, evangelical publisher Thomas Nelson pulled David Barton’s book The Jefferson Lies, having “lost confidence” in the work. Thomas Jefferson’s beliefs and actions have long been problematic for the US Christian Right, and Barton’s book presented a revisionist picture of the Founding Father that removed well-known difficulties. Alas, however, the publisher eventually decided that “basic truths just were not there” – something they would have known long beforehand had they taken note of Chris Rodda’s tireless debunking of Barton’s pseudo-scholarship. It seems that Thomas Nelson decided to act after conservative Christians raised concerns.

NPR reported at the time:

The book has already been pulled off the Thomas Nelson website, and the publisher is in the process of pulling down its availability as an e-book from retail partners. Publishing rights are being reverted to the author, and the physical copies of the book are in the process of being removed from bookstores.

However, those “physical copies” were sold on to Barton rather than destroyed; Publishers’ Weekly reported that:

Barton told PW he bought back around 17,000 copies of the current edition

Barton also told PW that once these had sold out there would be a new edition, and that he was in “negotiations” with “Mercury Ink, Glenn Beck’s publishing arm”; Beck had provided a foreword for the book, and Barton had helped to make the Mormon Beck acceptable to the Christian Right.

The announcement of negotiations with Mercury Ink was a bit of a letdown, given that Barton had promised that a “much larger national publisher and distributor” than Thomas Nelson would take over the book; Mercury Ink has a link to Simon & Schuster, but its list is small and consists of items such as an End Times thriller series by a Utah congressman (de-Mormonized from an earlier edition for a wider audience).

However, Chris Rodda noted in November:

…Barton’s book is once again available from Amazon, and the publisher listed in the info on the book’s Amazon page is none other than Barton’s very own WallBuilder Press. In other words, Barton’s even bigger publisher is himself.

Another promise Barton made was that twenty pages of material that Thomas Nelson allegedly omitted from his book were going to be put back in in the next edition. These allegedly missing twenty pages were described by Barton as additional documentation that was going to prove that his book was accurate, and would clear up everything.

I just ordered a copy of this apparently new edition of The Jefferson Lies from Amazon to see if it is, in fact, a new edition and if those allegedly missing twenty pages of additional documentation have been put back in as Barton promised.

It is not a huge surprise to discover that the book Chris received appears to be one of the 17,000 old Thomas Nelson copies rather than a new edition. She added:

If Barton wants to sell off the copies he has of the Thomas Nelson edition of his book on Amazon, he needs to do it like everybody else — as a third party seller. I’ve already sent Amazon a correction of the publisher via their automated system, informing them that the publisher of the book they’re selling is Thomas Nelson and not WallBuilders Press.

Chris now reports that the publisher listing on Amazon has been amended back to Thomas Nelson – which is a bit awkward for the publisher, since they’ve supposedly “removed” the book from bookstores. So why was the book being presented incorrectly as a new “WallBuilders Press” edition in the first place? Surely, Barton hasn’t been using Jefferson’s famous scissors to excise the Ninth Commandment?

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Georgetown law professor Rebecca Tushnet’s 43(B)log (“false advertising and more”) has been following the legal dispute between the Roman Catholic Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) and a rival “Ecumenical Order” based in Florida. SMOM, which enjoys a reputation considerable standing, took its ecumenical rival to a district court in Florida 2011 on trademark grounds – only to lose the case and to find itself accused of trademark fraud. Members of the Ecumenical Order include the neo-Pentecostal evangelist Rick Joyner (“Deputy Member of the Supreme Council) and Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin (“Chancellor”).

Tushnet summarised an opinion given in September. The appeal court rejected the fraud accusation on the following grounds:

Fraud means knowingly false, material representations of fact with an intent to deceive the [Patent and Trademark Office]; it must be shown by clear and convincing evidence.  The court of appeals narrowed its focus to the intent of the individual declarant, which isn’t actually required by the concept of subjective intent—other areas of the law have managed to determine the intent of a corporation—but made fraud impossible here, since the declarant didn’t know about the Ecumenical Order at all.

The appeal court also took a dim view of the original judge’s failure to conceal his general distaste:

As to the parties, the district court “struggle[d] with the parties’ characterizing themselves” as charities given the “unimpressive” amount of money they raised for charitable purposes; the court thought that members of both were “more interested in dressing up in costumes, conferring titles on each other and playing in a ‘weird world of princes and knights’ than in performing charitable acts.” Also, the judge opined that it was “tragic” that all Dr. Vann had done in her life was study the Knights of Malta and their records.  While deeming these remarks “wholly inappropriate” and “offensive,” reassignment was not justified because they didn’t show actual bias in favor of or against one of the parties over the other.

However,  Theresa M. Vann, who was the expert witness for the Roman Catholic order, has scholarly credentials; the Ecumenical Order, by contrast, was represented by its Grand Master, a businessman named Nicholas Papanicolaou. Papanicolaou believes that the  “Ecumenical Order” is a legitimate expression of the Knights of Malta both because of events in 1798 (when there was a Russian interlude), and because of the context of the Order’s origins in the eleventh century. Somewhat to my surprise, Papanicolaou emailed me with his views last year, and I discussed the historical claims here.

There has now been a follow-up; Tushnet again reports:

 …This time, the court of appeals found that the district court abused its discretion in considering Papanicolaou’s testimony, but that the error was harmless.

It was abuse of discretion to permit a lay witness to testify about historical matters.  But the district court made two discrete factual determinations, each of which independently supported its holding: first, that the two organizations shared a history until 1798, and second, that the Florida Priory expressly associated itself with the Ecumenical Order, a non-Catholic organization that couldn’t cause any confusion.

Papanicolaou has close links with some high-profile Christian Right figures, and Rick Joyner and Gen William “Jerry” Boykin are both members of the Ecumenical Order.

A new complication is that there is also now more than one Ecumenical Order – a number of European members “have dissociated themselves from the leadership / grand master-ship of Chev. Nicholas Papanicolaou for grave reasons already explained in detail to him by correspondence, after due warnings and requests for his resignation”.

Perhaps the reason was Papanicolaou’s association with Christian Right figures, and his use of anti-Islam scaremongering for fundraising purposes; here’s an extract from a letter he co-signed with Boykin in 2010:

Read Sura 18:21 and you will know WHY Muslims insist on building a mosque over Ground Zero… Your DONATION to the KNIGHTS will directly go to our global effort to… heighten the awareness of the grave danger that is confronting us and the United States Constitution…against Sharia Law.

One can understand why SMOM might want to do all it can to ensure that nobody confuses this kind of thing with its own statements.

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Glenn Beck’s “End-Times Prophet” Joel Richardson has commended a novel by a certain Luke Montgomery, entitled A Deceit to Die For. From the author’s website:

When history professor Ian O’Brien purchases an old collection of letters and books, he unknowingly steps into the world of a shadowy organization. His family is soon caught up in a web of intrigue and deceit spun out of a 16th century Muslim conspiracy that somebody still wants to keep secret… Meticulously researched and drawing on historical facts, Luke Montgomery’s fast-paced, thought-provoking thriller exposes the dark history behind the cultural and religious challenges we face today.

The author also discusses the alleged conspiracy on his blog, promising us that

…the more-than-400-year-old conspiracy is alive and well.

The story revolves around the Gospel of Barnabas, a really-existing medieval forgery which promotes the Islamic version of the life of Jesus, and which includes a supposed prediction of Muhammed. Textual evidence proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the book, which exists in Spanish and Italian, was composed between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, and the author was probably a European Christian convert to Islam (assuming he wasn’t just a troll). The text has sometimes been cited as genuine by Islamic polemicists (particularly following references by western Orientalists in the eighteenth century); Montgomery’s claim of a “400-year-old conspiracy” refers to a new forgery of the manuscript which showed up in Turkey earlier this year, provoking excitement that included a ludicrous claim in Iranian media that the book would bring about the “collapse” of Christianity.

Montgomery has also discussed the Gospel of Barnabas on WorldNetDaily, in conversation with the absurd Bob Unrah:

…[Montgomery] said the story of the Barnabas Gospel “gets trotted out” every so often by Muslims who want to stir passions by claiming Christians are trying to conceal the truth.

Montgomery said his research indicated the first modern references to the Barnabas Gospel were made in 1634 by Muslims fighting the Roman Catholic Church’s power in Spain.

This theory was discussed in a general way in a 2002 Harvard Theological Review article by Jan Joosten (available here). He writes:

During the last twenty-five years or so, the hypothesis that the Gospel of Barnabas was created by a Morisco [i.e. a formally ex-Muslim Roman Catholic convert in Spain or Portugal] around the year 1600 in Spain has been gaining support. The Spanish context would explain the peculiar mixing of Islamic and Christian elements as well as some other particularities. Moreover, an explicit reference to the Gospel of Barnabas occurs in a Morisco manuscript dating from 1634. This hypothesis is attractive, but there are several reasons to remain cautious.

Joosten argues that the Italian manuscript appears to have priority over the Spanish version, based on gospel quotations and allusions to Dante’s Inferno that have been abbreviated in the Spanish text. Further, the connections to Dante, and a reference to a hundred-year jubilee, make a fourteenth-century context more likely.

But what of Montgomery’s claim of a “conspiracy”? Someone created a bogus text; some other people living in later periods have promoted it, either opportunistically or in the genuine belief that it supports their religious beliefs. I fail to see why we need to posit a “conspiracy” in order to make sense of things. Montgomery himself writes:

…In one respect, Muslims are no different from people anywhere. They are predisposed to believe any report that confirms what they already believe and will do no research to verify the authenticity of the claims being made.

Maybe the question for us today is what have we believed without conducting proper intellectual due diligence?

That’s actually a good question for anyone taken in by Joel Richardson’s crank claim that the Bible predicts a Muslim anti-Christ; yet Montgomery proudly displays Richardson’s endorsement.

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A piece by Sheera Frenkel in the Times quotes archaeologist Aviram Oshri on the birthplace of Jesus (available via syndication at the Australian):

Archaeologists have long believed that Mary may have given birth to Jesus in Bethlehem of the Galilee, a hillside village far away in northern Israel.

“I think the genuine site of the Nativity is here, rather than the well-known site near Jerusalem,”… “Bethlehem in the Galilee was inhabited by Jews at the time of Jesus, whereas the other Bethlehem? There is no evidence that it was a living site, an inhabited area in the first century,”

…Unfortunately, said Mr Oshri, modern construction in the village has probably destroyed archaeological evidence. An ancient church was discovered in 1965 when a road was built, but earlier roadworks had gone through part of the site.

“…The church was very large, and built over the site of a cave. It was very similar in structure to the church of the Nativity,” he said.

The story has also been summarised by the Telegraph. It comes a mere seven years after Oshri wrote about the same thing in Archaeology magazine, and a mere four years after his theory was featured in National Geographic magazine (scroll down here).

As Frenkel indicates, Jesus’ historical birth in Galilee has been a mainstream scholarly position for decades, although the existence of two Bethlehems is of less significance than the fact that the Nativity stories of Matthew and Luke were written with Messianic prophecies from the Hebrew Bible in mind.

In fact, a serious scholar defending the traditional view is more of a news story, which is why everyone ought at least to be aware of a 2007 article from the Biblical Archaeological Review by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (recently seen on BBC1 talking about St Paul with David Suchet, and as spirited as ever despite obvious poor health). Murphy-O’Connor’s piece is paired against an article by Steve Mason, who lays out the case for Nazareth as the birthplace.

But either way, Oshri doesn’t help to move the discussion forward. His point about the church also appears in the 2008 National Geographic:

Oshri and his team have uncovered the remains of a later monastery and the largest Byzantine church in Israel, which raises the question of why such a huge house of Christian worship was built in the heart of a Jewish area. The Israeli archaeologist believes that it’s because early Christians revered Bethlehem of Galilee as the birthplace of Jesus.

The reasoning here is unconvincing: these structures date from centuries later, and there’s no way that they would have been erected to embody some kind of rival tradition to the Church of the Nativity.

The debate is also addressed in a new book by the Pope, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives (pp. 65-66); the Telegraph noted this in passing while getting over-excited by the fact that the book also contains the well-known detail that Year 1AD is merely an approximate date for the birth of Jesus. The pontiff – unremarkably – maintains the traditional view on Bethlehem on the grounds that Matthew and Luke are two independent traditions.

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Last night, British television (ITV) broadcast Joanna Lumley: The Search for Noah’s Ark, in which the actress travelled around the middle east and beyond looking for evidence of the Biblical story. The programme lasted just over an hour (padded out to 1:30 by adverts), and contains some interesting location filming and interviews, but the main attraction is Lumley trolling the world of Biblical archaeology and scholarship with ludicrous statements, particularly during the first part of the programme. In Istanbul, for instance, Lumley eats a bowl of ashure, known as “Noah’s Pudding”; she asks, utterly deadpan:

I wonder if this is what Noah ate to celebrate surviving the flood?

Lumley then heads for the area of Durup?nar near Mount Ararat; there is natural rock structure here that has been promoted by American fundamentalists as the Ark for some years, and we’re shown 1970s video footage of pseudo-archaeologist Ron Wyatt surveying the site (Wyatt’s alleged successes rival those of St Helen:  as well as Noah’s Ark, house and grave, Wyatt claimed to have seen the Ark of the Covenant, and to have found pre-flood wood without tree rings, sulphur balls from Sodom and Gomorrrah, and a sample of Jesus’ blood, which contained 23 chromosomes from Mary and one from God. Wyatt is now deceased, but his  Wyatt Archaeological Reseach Inc. lives on under the control of Richard Rives, who makes witless videos for WorldNetDaily).

Lumley views one of the nearby Hole Stones of Arzap (not identified as such in the programme), and explains to local children how it could have been used first to balance the ark and then as an anchor once dry land was spotted. She also takes in a local visitors’ centre, described in the programme as the “Museum of Noah’s Ark”. The curator, Hasan Ozer, shows her various mounted drawings and press cuttings, and explains to her how the site was first identified:

Before Noah’s Ark was discovered, there was a light shining here every night. Local people thought it was a mausoleum or treasure. Then in 1959 a Turkish Air Force pilot took a photo from the sky… When the photo was taken they said “This is Noah’s Ark”… They showed us the photo and said “Where is this place?” And I said, “I know where it is!”

A gallery of photos from the museum can be seen here, including a clipping of Ozer with Wyatt.

Alas, however, the site is subsequently debunked in an interview with a geologist named Murat Avc?, who explains to Lumley how the rock formation came to be where it is; the theory that the rock formation is the fossilised ark is not sustainable (he has a paper in English here). But this serves only to spur Lumley on, to look for evidence further afield.

Her first stop is Mardin, where she has a brief chat with the “Archbishop of Mardin & Diyarbakir” (more properly, Archbishop Filuksinos Saliba Özmen, Metropolitan of Mardin and Diyarbakir) at a “small monastery” (actually the large Deyr ul-Zafaran Monastery). Nearby Mount Judi, the Koranic site of Noah’s landing, is closed off by the military, so Lumley instead heads for the Islamic Tomb of Noah in Cizre, where the imam, Mahmut Muren, explains that Noah was just a “nickname”, and that he was actually named Abdul Ghaffar. Surveying the tomb itself, which indicates that Noah must have been many times taller than anyone living today, Lumley mutters “terribly tall”.

This is followed by an unexpected interlude back in the UK, during which Lumley discusses the Bible story with Julia Neuberger at the West London Synagogue and then pads things out by talking to Lloyd Buck, a bird specialist who handles ravens (the raven was the first bird sent out by Noah). Lumley then visits the British Museum to discuss tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh with AR (Alan) Millard, who tells her that he believes there was a flood in Mesopotamia which forms the basis of the story, and that this can be seen from a list of Babylonian kings which is interrupted by a flood.

Next is a visit to India, where Lumley talks about the story of King Manu with a scholar named Nivedita Ghosh. Could the story of King Manu be due to the transmission of the flood story from Mesopotamia? Lumley discusses trade links between Indus Valley Civilization and Mesopotamia with another Indian scholar (who for some reason isn’t given a name subtitle), and then takes off for Oman to learn about ancient shipbuilding techniques from Eric Staples; Noah’s Ark is “stretching the imagination”, he explains to her.

The programme ends with Lumley standing on Jebel Shams with Mohammed Alkindi, a geologist who believes the ancient story can be reconciled with scientific evidence of a “catastrophic event”. Lumley concludes:

It probably did happen. There probably was a catastrophic flood. There probably was a good man who saved gis family and animals. And it was kept as a moral story.

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A rant by anti-Kinsey obsessive Judith Reisman in defence of a screed by anti-gay “preacher” Bradlee Dean attacking Elena Kagan has led to a new spat between Wikipedia and WND (still widely known as WorldNetDaily). Reisman had written that

Wikipedia’s trashing of iconoclastic, ordained preacher Bradlee Dean proves that the heavy-metal drummer and his band have been doing a great job of delivering truth to American youth. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s creator, made his original fortune as a pornography trafficker. Wales’ cult of far-leftist volunteer editor zealots labor minute-by-minute to mislead readers who think Wikipedia’s half-truths – and worse – are a legitimate “encyclopedia.”

Why has Wikipedia slammed Bradlee Dean?

Writing in his Dec. 6, WND column, “Elena Kagan: Just in time for ‘gay’ marriage,” Dean suggests that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan recuse herself from the upcoming “gay marriage” case, based on a litany of her recorded homosexism.

“Homosexism” is a new word to me, but Reisman has a good line in neologisms; we owe to her the pseudo-medical concept of the “erototoxin”.

Reisman’s article goes on expound a video made by Dean explaining how all kinds of sexual behaviour that exists in the USA today can be traced back to Alfred Kinsey; this is somewhat self-referential, as Dean’s information almost certainly came to him via Reisman.

However, Reisman’s reference to Wales making “his original fortune as a pornography trafficker” upset Wales enough to contact WND‘s editor, Joseph Farah. WND‘s Chelsea Schilling has the story, which concerns a site run by Wales in the early 2000s called “Bomis”:”

Farah asked: “Are you suggesting that Bomis was not trafficking pornography? Or that you were not involved in Bomis?”

“By any sane measure of our revenue and profits, no, we were not ‘trafficking pornography,'” Wales replied. “Like many dot-com startups of the era, we struggled with what kind of advertisers to accept and we did have ‘adult’ advertisers – as did all the other major portals at the time. 99% of our revenue was not from that, so it’s totally ludicrous to claim we were ‘trafficking pornography.'”

Wales added, “You might as well claim that the owner of a local convenience store chain (who probably made more money than I did during that era) made a fortunate a [sic] pornography trafficker if they sold Playboy behind the counter. It’s nonsense and you know it.”

The website Wired reported in 2005 that Wales has “repeatedly revised the [Wikipedia] description of a search site he called Bomis, which included a section with adult photos called ‘Bomis Babes.'” Wikipedia had described Bomis Babes as “soft-core pornography,” but Wales changed it to “adult content section” and twice removed references to pornography.

“If R-rated movies are soft porn, it was porn,” he told the magazine. “In other words, no, it was not. That description is inaccurate.”

Wales is being disingenuous – the adult sites clearly carried the Bomis branding, so they were more than just the work of an “advertiser”; and it’s nonsense to say that soft core pornography is not pornography. It’s a strangely thin-skinned response, given that Bomis was also advertised via a photo of a pornographic actress wearing a “Bomis” t-shirt, and WND shows us a “photo of Wales aboard a yacht posing alongside two Bomis models who are wearing only panties and Bomis.com T-shirts” (the censorious Farah, however, has blocked our view of the “panties”). WND amended Reisman’s article to “originally made his living off a website that earned revenue from pornography traffickers”.

Schilling continues, with the case against Wikipedia:

WND’s Farah has been characterized by Wikipedia as a “Zionist twit and Jew-loving pig,” a “known [expletive] sucker,” “closet homosexual,” “conspiracy theorist,” “white supremacist,” a “proud member of the Ku Klux Klan,” a “religious nutcase” and “a pioneer in the political uses of psychedelics.” It also falsely accused Farah of having a romantic affair with a famous conservative female commentator.

Oddly, the list does not include the phrase “noted homosexual”, which caused some merriment in 2008, and which sparked Farah’s animus against the site. However, this is Farah’s turn to be disingenuous: all but one of the terms listed above would have been deleted as vandalism. Playing whack-a-troll with vandals on the site can be frustrating, but there’s no evidence that editors under Wales’ control are colluding in a campaign to defame Farah, any more than they felt the need to “slam” Bradlee Dean in order to rescue Elena Kagan.

And the one term that Farah has no right to expect Wikipedia to delete? Well, here’s Bradlee Dean just yesterday, discoursing on the Sandy Hook massacre:

The Sandy Hook shooting occurred just days after Sen. Rand Paul sent out an alert that the U.N. was set to pass the final version of the Small Arms Treaty, supported by Obama the day after election.

Part of the treaty bans the trade, sale and ownership of all semi-automatic weapons … like the one Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and 6 adults.

The “Batman shooting” in Aurora, Colo., also happened to coincide with the same time as negotiations of the U.N. Small Arms Treaty.

The timing is impeccable.

This was published on WND; how, then, can Farah regard it as an insult to be called a “conspiracy theorist”?

***

As an aside, Reisman’s pointed reference to Dean as an “ordained preacher” requires further commentary. Who ordained him? This 2010 article by Karl Bremer guides us through public records relating to his “You Can Run But You Can’t Hide” ministry:

Bradley Dean Smith first set roots in Annandale on November 17, 2004… Smith assigned the contract-for-deed to an entity called “Old Paths Church,” which currently shares the same address as YCR and was registered with the State of Minnesota by Jake MacAulay, YCR’s secretary…

Meanwhile, according to 10th District Court documents filed in Wright County, Smith and MacAulay attended classes offered by Glen Stoll of Edmonds, WA, who operated a business called Remedies at Law. There, they were promised they could buy what Stoll said were “established, exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable and assignable ministerial trusts” that would allow them to operate as a ‘free church’ that would be invulnerable to state regulation and control.”

….Stoll advised his customers to complete a “Political Profession of Faith” that he claimed would enable anyone to create their own personal ministry. And he would assist customers in getting such things as ID cards from the “Embassy of Heaven Church” in Stayton, OR, which Stoll said helps people sever all ties to government and become “Citizens of Heaven.” The Embassy of Heaven Church, which describes itself as “God’s Government on Earth,” at that time already had a long and controversial history of clashes with government authorities.

Although Dean/Smith later split from Stoll, Bremer draws attention to a 2009 piece in the Minnesota Independent that raises questions about the status of the “ministry” and its use of tax breaks. For background on the Embassy of Heaven Church, Bremer directs readers to a 2004 post by none other than Ed Brayton. Ed explains:

They believe that since they are citizens of Heaven and not citizens of the United States, they are exempt from any legal requirements imposed on them by the local, state or federal governments. They even go so far as to issue their own driver’s licenses, license plates and passports, which they amusingly present at airports thinking that they are going to be allowed on a plane with them. The three or four hundred Embassy of Heaven members nationwide who have attempted to drive their cars with Embassy license plates, using Embassy driver’s licenses, and without car insurance, have often found themselves being arrested. They then refuse to recognize the authority of the courts over them, refuse to post bail or enter a plea, and the courts typically hold them for a few weeks before deciding it’s not really worth it, then they let them go. 

Also, Stoll is apparently also Kent Hovind’s attorney.

Dean is of wider interest because his ministry has received an endorsement from Michele Bachmann (“They’re way on course. Because they get it. They get what this is all about.”), and he has links with other Republicans in Minnesota; in May 2011 Dean was invited to give the opening prayer at the at the Minnesota House of Representatives, which he used as an opportunity to attack Obama. He also enlisted Larry Klayman in a doomed attempt to sue Rachel Maddow for $50 million after she drew attention to his hateful anti-gay rhetoric in a way he claimed misrepresented him.

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