Bartholomew's Notes

From Interfax:

The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office has ruled that the 2×2 cartoon channel airs extremist cartoons.

“On the basis of the federal law on countering extremism a district prosecutor’s office has forwarded a paper to the Basmanny Court in Moscow asking to recognize a South Park episode as extremist,” a spokesman of the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office told Interfax on Monday.

The ruling follows complaints from The Russian Union of Evangelical Christians, as reported by Novosti:

The group’s leader, Konstantin Bendas, urged the prosecutors to ban the popular animated comedy series on the grounds that it contains “covert and overt propaganda of homosexuality and pedophilia as norms of sexual life.”

He added that some 20 experts in law and psychology had been involved in studying the issue.

“We have received some 15 reports by experts and they all agree that broadcasting the cartoon has a negative impact on viewers, especially on children and teenagers,” he said.

“Extremism” is often used in Russia to ban materials. Kommersant reported in December:

The latest, third, list of banned extremist publications (periodicals, book and films) was issued on Saturday by the Federal Registration Service (Rosregistratsia). With 61 entries, the new list is twice as large as the previous one. The first version of the list was compiled in July of this year and contained 14 titles. All of the publications are of a fascist, ultranationalist or ultrareligious nature.

…Although the list contains Russian nationalist publications, such as the newspaper Divizia (Military Division) in Russkoe Prikamye and Za Rus (For Russia) in Novorossiisk, 13 publications are by the same author: Said Nursi. “Said Nursi preached the most tolerant form of Islam,”said Nafigula Ashirov, cochairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia. A scholarly council from the Al-Azkhar University in Cairo, the Turkish Ministry of Muslim Affairs and the European Council for Fatwa Research have also come to the author’s defense…Possession or distribution of extremist material is punishable by up to five years in prison in Russia.

The International Federation for Human Rights adds:

In addition to the anti-terrorist legislation, there is now a law to fight extremism aimed at cracking down on acts that incite racial, religious and political hatred , as well as membership in an organization qualified as extremist. The nebulous definitions given for extremism and terrorism, have made it possible for intolerable excesses and abuses in the eyes of civil society, namely the creation of a climate of intimidation that targets individuals, NGOs, groups, societies, and associations for example the Sakharov Centre case. The same lack of clarity has made it possible for certain cases, namely those involving Muslims, to be tried for extremism rather than anti-terrorism, making them easier to bring to trial. Moreover, the list of outlawed publications is getting longer everyday and now includes, without explanation or clarification, any works titled “The Founding Principles of Islam”. The State clearly uses anti-extremism legislation as a mechanism for social and political control that is detrimental to freedom of expression and freedom of belief.

The “Sakharov Centre” case involves a art display called Forbidden Art-2006, which was regarded by Orthodox Christians as blasphemous; the director was charged with “inciting religious hatred” (a strategy also currently being used in the UK).

Forum 18 notes another case of an Islamic book being banned:

…Under the Extremism Law, anyone carrying out mass distribution, preparation or storage with the aim of mass distribution of the texts risks a four-year prison term. Handed a list of the titles and asked if any support terrorism, leading Islam specialist Aleksei Malashenko told Forum 18: “If you say this, then every book, including the Bible, may be called pro-terrorist. The problem is not the books, but one of commentary – how they are used.” Forum 18 has read one of the banned publications, Muhammad Ali al-Hashimi’s “The Personality of a Muslim”. The book’s sole emphasis is on kindness and generosity, including towards non-Muslims – but a criminal case has now been opened against the head of Moscow Islamic University’s publishing department for distributing it.

As for the Nursi book, Forum 18 tells us that

The ban relies solely upon analysis of the work by psychologists and linguists of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Russia’s Ombudsman for Human Rights, Vladimir Lukin, and a wide range of Russia’s Muslim leaders and scholars has condemned the ban.

I’ve noted before that Russian psychologists have been co-opted by nationalist agendas.

Bendas’ opposition to South Park is of a part with his distaste for Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“We are convinced that the time has come to reexamine the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We are against those human rights that lead to the corruption of society and contradict moral bases,” said Konstantin Bendas, business manager of the Russian Union of Christian Evangelicals.

However, it should be remembered that evangelical Christianity is viewed generally with hosility by the Russian Orthodox Church, which now enjoys close links with the state; such denunciations are doubtless designed to allay concerns about patriotism.

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OneNewsNow puffs an apocalyptic paperback:

In his latest book What in the World is Going On?, Dr. David Jeremiah examines and explains current global trends through the lens of scripture. He says natural disasters, famine, the energy crisis, terrorism, and other events should cause Christians to live expectantly.

“When you add to that the fact that Israel now is celebrating its 60th anniversary as a nation, and that Israel has to be in its own land for the end-time events to take place, I’ve never lived in such a time,” the pastor exclaims. “And while it is…challenging it [also] is really exciting — because you read the Bible in one hand and you read the newspaper in the other, and you see the prophecies of the Bible are absolutely correct.”

The idea that “the newspaper” is a record of unfolding prophecy has been around for a long time. Here’s a certain John Cumming, writing in The End back in 1855 (p.19):

It seems to me that [the “dispensation’s”] end is near…in a comparison of what the New Testament predicts as the marks of the end, with what the newspaper registers as the facts of the day, there is a coincidence so startling, so striking, the one so dovetailing and fitting in with the other, that I cannot help taking up a newspaper in this very year, and during the last two or three years, with a sort of sense of sacredness with which I never read the newspaper before….I think the newspaper of the nineteenth century is man unconsciously recording, “It is done.” God writes the prophecy; the journalist steps in, and without thinking of the prophecy testifies its complete and magnificent fulfilment. (1)

More than a hundred years before that, Jonathan Edwards would scour Boston newspapers looking for signs of the end times. As George Marsden notes in his biography of Edwards (pp. 415-416):

…Edwards was still tracking the decline of the papacy in his notebook “An Account of Events Probably Fulfilling the Sixth Vial,” which had to do with the drying up of the Rivers of Babylon (i.e. Rome). In it he was meticulously recording items from newspapers that dealt with any adverse financial news about the pope and his minions.

Then as now, the belief was that international turbulence proved that the end was nigh; and while “the Rivers of Babylon” might dry up, books claiming to link current events to prophecy have proved to be a continual cash cow. Particularly shamelessly, sometimes you can find a “revised edition” of the same apocalyptic paperback: revised because the original predictions have shown themselves to be bogus.

Jeremiah is the pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church, which was previously pastored by none other than Tim LaHaye; the book is endorsed by LaHaye and by Joel C. Rosenberg, both of whom have churned out end-of-the-world bestsellers. The content is the same old stuff we’ve heard from Hal Lindsey over the past forty years:

The future manifestation of the Roman Empire that Daniel prophesied twenty-five hundred years ago will take the form of a coalition or confederation of ten world leaders and will encompass the same territory as the historic Roman Empire. And today we can see that coalition taking shape right before our eyes!…The Rapture will give irrefutable confirmation of end time events seven years before they come to pass for those who are left behind…There are also other factors that make the ascendance of a global leader more plausible than ever before.

And:

Clearly America did not become the land of the free and the home of the brave by blind fate or a happy set of coincidences. A benevolent God was hovering over this nation from her very conception so that today, although America has only 5 percent of the world’s population, she has more than 50 percent of the modern luxuries that characterize civilization…

Not much chance of a Jeremiad from Jeremiah, then. The author thinks there is some spiritual significance in the fact that America is not mentioned in Bible prophecy; clearly it can’t simply be because Biblical authors new nothing about the existence of the Western hemisphere.

Jeremiah’s website includes an unfortunate advert:

Well, Jeremiah, if you want to call your books “unbelievable”, I’m not going to argue…

****

(1) This book is available for free on Google Books. It was brought to my attention by Joseph Canfield’s The Incredible Scofield and his Book.

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Mark Elf at Jews sans Frontieres has an interesting follow-up piece on the Jenna Delich vs Harry’s Place story. Delich, as I blogged here, is a lecturer who, as a member of a University and College Union activist forum in the UK, posted a link to an article hosted on David Duke’s website concerning Israel. This was brought to the attention of “liberal hawk” blog Harry’s Place, which ran posts denouncing her as an anti-Semite (including a photograph). The article she linked to was not by David Duke, and while it avoids obviously anti-Jewish rhetoric, its author does suggest that “conspiracy theories” about control of the media may be correct. Delich explained that she had not known who David Duke was, and admitted to making a mistake. She also complained to Harry’s Place‘s ISP, and the blog was taken down for a while. This in turn led to various blogs offering “solidarity” with Harry’s Place on free speech grounds, including blogs usually at odds with the site politically.

Mark believes the calls for “solidarity” were misguided:

Jenna Delich is the victim of a witch hunt intended to intimidate academics from speaking out in support of Palestinian human rights and liberation.

We condemn the misguided “solidarity” of confused leftists with the perpetrators of this witch hunt on the bogus justification of protecting “free speech”. We condemn Harry’s Place and its sock puppets for the campaign of deliberate omissions and misrepresentations intended to defame Delich.

We support Delich because she deserves our support and yours. Delich made mistakes, but nothing she said or did remotely justifies what is being done to her.

My view was that Delich would have been wiser to ignore it all and accept the unhappy consequences of giving her opponents such a gift, but that she may indeed have had a case over certain statements on the HP site. However, I find the idea of choosing to go after a webhost rather than an author to be inherently undesirable on free speech grounds, and to me it suggests that the threat of following through a libel action is probably hollow. And as a blogger, I’m also against it for reasons of self-preservation. It was a poor strategy in any case, as HP managed to find a new webhost that was more willing to make a stand.

However, Mark points out that HP has since made some revisions:

[HP author David] Toube claims that the post was not defamatory. Then what happened to the headline UCU and the David Duke fan? Why was that headline removed from HP only to appear on sock puppet blogs around the web. It now appears on HP as the “David Duke link”. Jenna Delich’s photo has been removed from the original post, together with the accompanying text “links to far-right websites associated with the Ku Klux Klan.”

These rather important revisions, by which HP surely admits that it has not been “whiter than white”, have not been brought to the attention of readers.

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From (as ever) Interfax:

A silver lamp before royal doors in the cathedral of the Iveron Monastery in Mount Athos started swinging back and forth early in August not long before Georgian troops attacked Tskhinvali.

Athos monks claim that the icon-lamp has started swinging by itself during many centuries on the eve of great disasters and trials, the Zhizn daily writes.

The lamp was swinging before the six-day war in Israel, an earthquake in Armenia, and before American troops invaded Iraq it was swinging so much that oil almost splashed out, the paper says…

The supposed “swinging lamp” of Iveron has been remarked on before; according to this site

on Athos, when during Passion Week a lamp in the monastery of Iveron often swings by itself, it has been noticed that the swinging is reduced in size whenever the monks chant too loud.

The lamp is associated with an icon, the Panagia Portaitissa or Theotokos Iverskaya, which is believed to have miraculous properties (weeping myrrh, moving around). A woman whose cousin is a monk at the monastery wrote on a discussion forum that

There have been many recorded miracles associated with this icon and the monks and visitors have seen the oil lamp that hangs in front of it swaying just before certain events. The whole matter has been scientifically examined and there is no explanation for why this happens i.e. geographic faults under the monastery or whatever, or abnormalities in the building itself. Only the oil lamp in front of the icon sways, all the other hanging oil lamps in the church are still, so it is something of a mystery.

Meanwhile, a pro-Russian cleric in South Ossetia claims that the Virgin Mary showed up in person to rally morale against the Georgians:

Many residents of Tskhinvali saw the Holy Virgin during the most violent battles, Bishop Georgy (Pukhate), head of the Alania Diocese acting in the territory of South Ossetia and not recognized in the Orthodox world.

“She was seen in long garments. She mournfully passed along the streets. She was seen in the evening and at night in places of most violent and cruel battles. Militiamen realized, the Holy Virgin didn’t leave the city to save it from total destruction. She came to help us,” Bishop Georgy said in his interview published on Tuesday by electronic paper Utro.ru

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A statuette of Jesus with an erection attached has resulted in an art gallery facing a private prosecution for allegedly causing “harassment, alarm and distress to the public”. Various reports assembled by me at The Sun – Tabloid Lies.

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From the website of John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, up until recently:

From the same website, today:

The Juneau Christian Center is associated with Sarah Palin; John Hagee caused John McCain some embarrassment a couple of months ago.

(Hat tip: Sarah Posner)

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A remarkable coincidence: just a few months after complaining of threats against his life, a Russian journalist based in Ingushetia has been accidentally shot in the head while in police custody. From Reporters Without Borders:

Journalist Magomed Yevloyev, one of the creators of the Ingush news website Ingushetiya.ru (http://ingushetiya.ru), was shot dead today while held by interior ministry officials in Nazran (in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia). He was arrested as he disembarked at Nazran airport from a flight which Ingush President Murat Zyazikov had also taken. He was admitted to a hospital an hour later with a gunshot wound to the head and died on the operating table.

…The Ingush interior ministry said Yevloyev was killed “accidentally” while resisting arrested….Yevloyev had been the target of serious threats and, in October 2007, he accused President Zyazikov on the website of hiring hit-men to kill him.

Yevloyev’s death comes just a few weeks after a Moscow court confirmed that the website should be suppressed, and shortly after its editor, Rosa Malsagova, fled the country. The president of Ingushetia, Murat Zyazikov, is close to the Kremlin.

An English-language blog devoted to the topic of Ingushetia has more details here.

Meanwhile, Interfax reports that

There will be no censorship in the Internet, Russian Communications and Information Technology Minister Igor Shchyogolev told students of the Moscow State University’s Journalism Department on Monday.

“Such censorship is impossible for technological reasons,” he said.

As state regulation of the Internet is problematic technically, it is necessary to promote self-regulation, the minister said.

And what better way to “promote self-regulation” than by having the authors of troublesome websites summarily executed by the police?

(name variations: Magomed Yevloyev; Magomed Yevloev; Rosa Malsagova; Roza Malsagova)

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Various reporters and bloggers have been delving into Sarah Palin’s religious affiliations and backgrounds. From Harper’s:

Since becoming governor in 2006, Palin has attended the Juneau Christian Center, where Mike Rose serves as senior pastor. Her previous pastor was David Pepper of the Church on the Rock in Palin’s hometown of Wasilla — a church that “was kind of a foundation for her.”

Harper’s notes that Rose is a Creationist who believes that evolutionary biologists are of the opinion that humans are descended from chimpanzees, and that “these are the last days”. He also has links with CUFI. Pepper, meanwhile, rails against the ACLU and warns that “Judgement Day is coming”. However, finding a few quotes along these lines in a conservative evangelical church is hardly a shocking revelation, and such themes do not appear to be major obsessions of the two pastors.

And in any case, John Allen at the National Catholic Reporter is rightly cautious about identifying Palin too closely with particular churches:

Palin was briefly touted as the first Pentecostal to run on a major party ticket. A spokesperson, however, told the Associated Press yesterday that although the 44-year-old mother of five grew up in the Assemblies of God, the largest organized Pentecostal denomination in the world with an estimated 57 million members, she does not consider herself a “Pentecostal.”… Palin appears to be part of that rapidly expanding galaxy of “post-denominational” Christianity, where elements of Evangelical and Pentecostal styles of faith and worship fuse into a myriad of unique local combinations, and where old denominational loyalties are essentially dead.

Meanwhile, there’s a very good round-up resources concerning Palin’s religious and church-state views at Religion Clause. Possible past links to Pat Buchanan are also coming under scrutiny. And for a round-up of religious right enthusiasm for Palin, see this piece by Frederick Clarkson.

UPDATE: The Huffington Post notes Palin’s past links with Wasilla Assembly of God. In 2004 the pastor there, Ed Kalnins, warned congregants against voting for John Kerry with the threat of damnation, and in 2005 he said that hell awaited those who criticised George Bush’s response to the Katrina crisis, since criticising the President is like criticising a pastor. He also holds the belief that in the “Last Days” Alaska will become a refuge for “hundreds of thousands” of people. Kalnins also saw Palin’s election as governor in supernatural context:

As for his former congregant and current vice presidential candidate, Kalnins has asserted that Palin’s election as governor was the result of a “prophetic call” by another pastor at the church who prayed for her victory. “[He made] a prophetic declaration and then unfolds the kingdom of God, you know.”

Even Palin expressed surprise at that pastor’s advocacy for her candidacy. “He was praying over me,” she said in June. “He’s praying, ‘Lord make a way, Lord make a way…’ And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m gonna do, he doesn’t know what my plans are, and he’s praying not, ‘Oh Lord, if it be your will may she become governor,’ or whatever. No, he just prayed for it. He said, ‘Lord, make a way, and let her do this next step.’ And that’s exactly what happened. So, again, very very powerful coming from this church.”

Kalnin’s sermons have now been removed from the church’s website, and there is instead a notice:

…We do know that Gov Palin is a woman of integrity.  She is a servant of the people, she is a strong leader.  As for her personal beliefs, Governor Palin is well able to speak for herself on those issues.

As Alaskans we are excited about our Governor being selected as the nominee for Vice President.  As residents of Wasilla, we are ecstatic about one of our own being thrust to the national forefront.  However, as a church, it is not appropriate for us to endorse any one candidate over another.  As believers, we are reminded in 2 Peter 2.13 that we are to submit to those in authority.  1 Timothy 2.1-2 tells us pray for those in authority.  This we will do no matter who is elected.  We wish the best to Governor Palin, and Senator McCain, as well as to Senator Obama and Senator Biden.

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The Independent reports on an environmental disaster in Galilee:

The waters of the Sea of Galilee are now at their lowest on record and, officials say, are set to fall even lower. The crisis is both natural and man-made…Attempts by the Israeli government to bring in strict restrictions on water usage would, analysts say, be politically suicidal with an election on the horizon. No party would be willing to put forward such proposals against the powerful farming lobby.

Unless something drastic is done, the lake risks over-salination and becoming unsustainable. Fish stocks are already very low.

Perhaps it’s just as well that Israeli lawyer Ron Major’s 1999 plan for the lake apparently never came to fruition:

The idea that struck Ron on Highway One was to build a submerged hydraulic platform in the Sea of Galilee which, from August, will allow visitors to walk on the water, in the footsteps of Jesus, for about 10 shekels (roughly pounds 1.50) a time…Major expects his “Walk on the Water Experience” will be able to carry 50 tourists at once.

Major got as far as building a temporary platform, which was used by Swedish pop singer Charlotte Nielsen as publicity for the Eurovision song contest, but there are no subsequent reports.

Bible scholar Jerome Murphy-O’Connor was unamused by the idea:

He said: “This is bloody ridiculous. It is an absurd theme park gimmick. I suppose some idiots would want to get themselves photographed walking on the water, but what kind of pilgrim would play this silly game?”

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A hilarious clarification, from Christian fundamentalist blogger Joel Richardson:

Now, please do not get me wrong, I am not comparing Barack Obama to Satan. I’m comparing him to Hitler.

Glad we’ve got that straight, otherwise we might have thought that Richardson was someone who perhaps should not be taken particularly seriously:

After comparing the design of Obama’s podium to the Pergamum Altar, it is clear that the two are nearly identical. While some are claiming that Obama’s Temple is modeled after the Russian Kazan Cathedral, it is clear that Obama’s Temple bears a much closer resemblance to the Pergamum Altar.

Fair enough. OK, so the kitschy Obama podium has some (naff) backlit windows, while the Altar doesn’t; the podium has only eight or so columns across its main part against the Altar’s dozen or so; the podium has Doric capitals while the Altar has Ionic capitals – oh, and the podium appears to curve – but other than that it’s nearly exactly the same! Amazing!

But so what? Well, the “Pergamum Altar” (also known as the “Pergamon Altar”) is a significant piece of Classical architecture, but for the author of the Biblical Book of Revelation it was also the “Throne of Satan”. And, as Richardson points out, it provided the model for Albert Speer’s Zeppelintribüne! Just two reasons why Obama is like Hitler:

They both found it appropriate to model their respective power-podiums after Greek Temples dedicated to the “gods”. Both have chosen to give perhaps the most important political speeches of their lives in replica Greek Temples, under the lights, in an open field, to the masses of their cheering fans.

This is, of course, a new spin on old conspiracy theories about how the neo-Classical architecture of  Washington D.C. is soem sort of occult plot. Perhaps McCain would be advised to go for a Gothic theme.

I last encountered Richardson – co-author of Why We Left Islam – here.

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