Bartholomew's Notes

Remember Larry Caldwell? I blogged him in July 2005, a few months after he announced plans to sue his children’s school:

California parent Larry Caldwell has filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the Roseville Joint Union High School District and school officials alleging that his constitutional rights to free speech, equal protection and religious freedom were violated in the course of his year-long effort to improve the teaching of evolution in his district. “I tried to exercise my basic rights as a citizen to propose a new idea, and school officials responded by suspending normal procedures, publicly attacking my personal religious beliefs, and even threatening to sue me to stop me from speaking out,” reported Caldwell. “These are tactics you’d expect in a banana republic, not the state of California.”…

Inevitably, the cause was picked up by WorldNetDaily. Caldwell’s proposed “improvement” to the syllabus was a video of Jonathan Wells’ Icons of Evolution and materials by Cornelius Hunter, whose book Darwin’s God argues that Darwin’s theories were derived from his religious needs. By focusing solely on these critiques, Caldwell could claim that he was not seeking to promote intelligent design or other forms of Creationism, and (somewhat to my surprise) both he and Hunter left irritated comments on this blog when I explored the religious context to their campaign.

Two-and-a-half years later, however, the courts have rejected Caldwell’s claims of persecution. For some reason, the Discovery Institute, which gave publicity to the case and posted online relevant documents, has not yet updated its site with the denouement; Religion Cause, however, has the details:

In Caldwell v. Roseville Joint Union High School District, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 66318 (ED CA, Sept. 7, 2007), a California federal district court dismissed claims by intelligent design activist Larry Caldwell that he was unconstitutionally denied access to various forums to promote his “Quality Science Education” proposals…In granting summary judgment to the school district, the court emphasized that “this case is not about whether a theory of intelligent design can or should be included in the science curriculum…. Rather, this case is about whether Larry Caldwell was denied access to speak in various fora or participate in certain processes because of his actual or perceived religious beliefs.”

Caldwell’s “Quality Science Education for All” website is now “Currently Under Re-Construction”.

UPDATE: Ed Brayton has more.

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Joseph Farah goes off the deep end:

While the Muslim zealots who administer the Temple Mount continue to excavate the site without a thought or care as to the integrity of the most sacred ground in Judaism, not to mention an archaeological treasure trove, the Israeli political elite is secretly working out a “final solution” for what they consider a troublesome, burdensome stone in their shoe.

Farah calls this an “unholy alliance” of

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israeli President Shimon Peres, most of the rest of the Israeli political elite and the sworn enemies of the Jewish state, those who would finish the work of Adolph Hitler if they ever got the chance.

Olmert, Peres and the inner sanctum of the Israeli political elite fear the Temple Mount. They always have. In fact, ever since Israel captured the site in June 1967, fools like Olmert and Peres have been skulking about trying to figure out a way to rid themselves and their country of it.

…Because they know if it remains in the possession of the Jewish people long enough, the Jewish people will obey their G-d and rebuild the Temple. This would be unthinkable to the Israeli political elite. They believe the Israeli government is the one, true G-d of the Israeli people. The Israeli political elite does not recognize the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They do not recognize the G-d who gave the Jewish people the land deed for their nation. They do not recognize the G-d who promised the Jewish people would be restored to the land. And they do not recognize the G-d who restored them to the land after 1,800 years in exile.

This is actually a repudiation of mainstream religious Jewish thought, which has long argued that the building of the Temple will be an eschatological event undertaken by the Messiah. David Bleich’s Contemporary Halakhic Problems explains (p. 246):

The rebuilding of the Bet ha-Mikdash itself is precluded until the coming of the Messiah. Rashi, in his commentary on Sukkah 41a and Rosh ha-Shanah 30a, states that the third Temple will not be a human artifact but shall miraculously appear as a fully built edifice. According to Rashi’s opinion, the verse “The sanctuary, O Lord, which Thy hands have established” (Exod. 15:17) refers to the future Bet ha-Mikdash. Rambam, on the other hand, enumerates the building of the Bet ha-Mikdash as one of the 613 commandments…However. He states explicitly that this Bet ha-Mikdash will be rebuilt only with the advent of the Messiah himself. Not only will the Temple be built by the Messiah, but this construction will serve as substantiation of the messianic claim.

A footnote adds:

Rashi’s view is implicit in the nahem prayer of the minhah service for the Ninth of Ab: “For Thou, O Lord, didst consume it [the Temple] with fire and through fire wilt Thou in future rebuild it.” The text of the prayer is based upon the Jerusalem Talmud, Berakhot 4:3.

Maimonides’s (“Rambam’s”) perspective provides some wriggle-room for those who want to take matters into their own hands, but only a fringe of Jewish fundamentalists have chosen this route – although egged on by thousands of Christian Zionists (as I blogged here). Further, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel warns pious Jews not to enter the site of the Temple Mount at all, due to its holiness. So, Farah’s claim that the Temple has not been rebuilt simply due to the atheism of Israel’s “political elite” is just not true. Is Farah a blundering fool who can manage affectatons like writing “G-d” while remaining ignorant of the religious traditions of a group that he claims to champion, or is he a calculating liar seeking to whip up the apocalyptic fervour of his Christian fundamentalist readership?

Of course Olmert and Peres “fear” Jewish religious fanatics taking over the area, for two rather obvious reasons – firstly, it would cause considerable international strife, and secondly, it would pitch Israel towards an ultra-orthodox theocracy. Neither problem bothers Farah, though, because Christian Zionists like him don’t give a damn about actual Jewish lives. Further conflict in the Middle East is inevitable, not just because Muslims are evil to the core, but because God, acting like some kind of puppet-master, has future wars planned out in advance. And Israel ought to be theocratic because Jews should fit the sentimental stereotype of Christian Zionist fantasy.

But what of the actual “excavations” (in fact, the digging of a trench to lay some cables) which have provoked Farah’s wrath? There is indeed cause for concern – the waqf’s track record in these matters is not encouraging, and its bizarre denial that there was ever a biblical Temple on the site suggests that any work undertaken will be done recklessly. It is also interesting to note that a petition against allowing the work to continue includes the archeologist Israel Finkelstein, who can hardly be accused of having a religio-nationalist agenda. However, there is some hypocrisy here. Back to WorldNetDaily, and a report by Aaron Klein:

Rabbi Chaim Richman, director of Israel’s Temple Institute, was among those on the Mount last month…He told WND he attempted to take pictures of the damage the bulldozers are allegedly wrecking on the wall, but his digital camera was confiscated by Israeli police at the direction of Waqf officials…Richman charged the Waqf was “trying to erase Jewish vestiges from the Temple Mount.”

Klein, who always whitewashes his Israeli far-right contacts, fails to tell us that Richman is also involved with the “Sanhedrin”, a Kahanist theocratic organization founded in 2005, to the excitement of Christian Zionists like Hal Lindsey (as I blogged at the time). Again at WND, Lindsey argued that some of those involved believed that a new temple could be built on the site without damaging the Dome of the Rock:

The second theory (which I am convinced is the most accurate) is that the Temple was built north of the Dome of the Rock. Dr. Asher Kaufman developed this theory, using certain archeological evidences that he found before the Muslim’s [sic] destroyed them… The Temple can be rebuilt and stand alongside the Dome of the Rock without disturbing it. And since the outer court, also known as the Court of the Gentiles, is given to the Gentiles in this period just before the Messiah comes, it infers that there would be a Gentile building there, i.e., the Dome of the Rock.

How such a building – which would require access for thousands of visitors and animals, plus drainage for the blood from all the animal sacrifices – could operate without “disturbing” the adjacent structures is not explained; and at any rate, this is a minority view among Richman’s associates. According to the Sanhedrin website (square brackets in original):

The majority of the committee support the idea that the site is where the Dome of the rock. The steering committee of the Sanhedrin sat as a subcourt [earlier this year] and the majority vote [of the judges based on a detailed presentation of evidence by the architects, archaeologists and historians ruled that the current evidence most convincingly indicates] that the exact place is the where Dome of the Rock currently stands.

It goes without saying, of course, that the new structure has to be on the site of the original. Chaim Richman is also the co-author of several books with Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, who is also a Sanhedrin member and Temple Institute director. Timothy Weber’s On the Road to Armageddon gives us some background to Richman’s colleague and collaborator (pp. 260-61):

Ariel is a doer who is not afraid to justify violence in the achievement of his ends. During the mid- and late 1980s, he was the leader of Tzfiyah (“expectation”), a right-wing group organized to support members of the Jewish underground who had been jailed after their attempt to blow up the Dome of the Rock. Ariel was furious that some members of the Gush Emunim had condemned the actions of the underground. He argued that “thou shalt not kill” applied only to killing fellow Jews, not non-Jews…he condemned all Jews who did not support the building of the third temple and declared that since Christians and Muslims were idolators, they should not be allowed to live in Israel [sourced from Gershom Gorenberg, End of Days].

So, while Farah denounces Israeli leaders for failing to protect the remains currently being uncovered by the waqf, he is willing to puff a group which wants to destroy another ancient structure on the site – and which despises his own Christian religion.

Farah ends darkly:

Olmert and Peres and the rest of those unprincipled cowards and wolves in sheep’s clothing have sold out their own people. They are now bed partners with the Islamo-fascist fanatics they have entrusted with the holiest site in all Judaism, not to mention Western Civilization’s richest archaeological treasure.

Let me make a little prediction: No matter how hard Olmert and Peres work in conjunction with the Muslims to destroy the Temple Mount, it will never come to pass.

In fact, I will predict that their actions will lead to a rising chorus among Jews in Israel and around the world to rebuild the Temple.

And let me make “a little prediction” of my own. I lived in Jerusalem in 1993-94, and I remember seeing dozens of right-wing fly-posters showing Yitchak Rabin’s head placed above a Nazi uniform. The consequence, of course, was that Rabin ended up being murdered by an Israeli fanatic. Should the same fate befall Olmert or Peres in revenge for their plans for a “final solution” and links to “Islamo-fascists” and “those who would finish the work of Adolph Hitler”, I predict that Farah and Klein will follow the example of a certain non-Jewish Biblical figure, and wash their hands of responsibility.

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Bizarre scenes in Florida, where a mayor decided to show that the community supported his anti-gay policies by inviting a representative of a religious group dressed in military fatigues to address the press at city hall:

A group of Christian clergymen flocked to the side of [Fort Lauderdale] Mayor Jim Naugle on Tuesday, saying the depth of sexual sin in Broward County necessitates an old-fashioned spiritual revival.

The African-American church representatives said the gay community misunderstands Naugle’s stance toward them. He is here to help, they said.

…Elder Mathes Guice of the Koinonia Worship Center in Pembroke Park said the county tourist council’s marketing targeted to gay visitors “led the spiritual community on a collision course with Satan.”

Naugle has been the subject of considerable derisory comment for several weeks, since he unveiled plans for an expensive toilet:

While trying to make a case for spending what would turn into $500,000 for a single seater toilet, Jim argued that there needed to be a private single toilet at the beach so two gays could not fit in it and have sex. Jim called it a crisis.

What he didn’t count on was that a reporter would track down his claims that this had become a serious problem in our community, and report that it wasn’t. As a matter of fact, the police, after an exhaustive search, could only come up with eight cases since 2005. Instead of drawing attention to serious problems, the mayor has now had multiple press conferences to talk about toilet sex. How sad!

But what about Mathes Guice and those uniforms? Pam Spaulding notes he’s an elder at the Koinonia Worship Center & Village, which has a web presence on My Space. An audio message there uses a lot of the “spiritual warfare” language typical of the conservative Christian “men’s movement” (see this essay by Jeff Sharlet for an overview), but aimed specifically at African-Americans (there are a number of US churches that cater to the needs of black Americans; Barack Obama is associated with one, to the outrage of conservatives). The senior pastor of Koinonia is Eric H. Jones, who is himself a Broward County mayor, of the City of West Park:

Mayor Jones currently serves as Senior Pastor at Koinonia Worship Center & Village which he founded in 1979. Prior to that position, he was General Manager of Continental Blood Components from 1984 to 1987 and Quality Control Supervisor of North American Biological from 1974 to 1985.

Guice and other members of the church apparently patrol the neighbourhood in their military outfits, as reported in the Broward Times in June:

The men’s ministry of the Carver Ranches-based Koinonia Worship Center will begin canvassing the drug-infested neighborhoods and crime-riddled streets of Deerfield Beach, starting this weekend. Dressed in camouflaged military fatigues, Deacon Mathes Guice, and other members of the ministry, will join the Rev. Nathaniel Knowles and other pastors there to begin the process to address crime and violence in the city.

According to a note from one of Naugle’s opponents, published by Spaulding, they also appear to have branched out into security:

I’ve never heard to this group before, the ones in military dress. They concern me a great deal. When I entered City Hall yesterday evening to observe the press conference the Mayor had called with them. Two of them escorted me from the front doors on the north side of the building to the elevators and then stood and took up ‘posts’ in the elevator lobby.

A commentator to Spaulding’s website notes some further details about Guice:

Yahoo people search turned up one Mathes Guice in FL, age 61. A Mathes Guice received an acknowledgment of 15 years service to the Broward Co. Sheriff’s Office in 2004 (pdf). Someone by this name was also VP of the Ft Lauderdale NAACP and apparently has also been active in working to re-integrate ex-convicts back into society via a tax-exempt organization…

The commentator also found this announcement:

If you have a felony criminal record, you cannot get a job, or even obtain a license to cut hair, until you have had your rights restored. Rev. Eric Jones is collaborating with the Broward Public Defender’s Office, State Rep. Perry E. Thurston, Jr., the Broward State Attorneys Office, and a number of other organizations to hold the Broward Redemption Workshop. The workshop will assist those who need their rights restored. It will take place at Jones’ church, Koinonia Worship Center…

Public Christian statements against homosexuality are the in thing just now; I blogged on a rally in Uganda a couple of weeks ago, while Protestant Christians in Ukraine are currently planning a march supporting “criminal penalties for homosexual propaganda and popularization”.

(Hat tip: Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Name variation: Mathis Guice

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Following on from my last entry, the AFP reports:

The head of a major Middle Eastern development company flew to North Korea Wednesday, and a South Korean report said he may be looking at investment opportunities.

Mohamed Alabbar, chairman of Emaar Properties based in the United Arab Emirates, used his own plane for the trip from South Korea, an education foundation official said.

…The official, from the Sun Moon Education Foundation run by the Unification Church, said Alabbar flew to Pyongyang after receiving an honorary doctorate in law from Sun Moon University in South Korea.

During his first trip to the communist state he was to visit a world peace centre and a hotel, which are run by South Korea’s Tongil business group founded by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon.

This was not the first honorary degree for Alabbar; he also has one from his alma mater, Seattle University:

A graduate of the Albers School of Business and Economics, Alabbar has gone on to a career of great distinction. He is chairman of the Dubai-based Emaar Properties, which has developments in Dubai as well as joint ventures and projects in India, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Syria, Pakistan, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. In less than five years, Emaar has become one of the world’s most valuable companies.

…Under Alabbar’s leadership, Emaar invests significantly in education throughout the Middle East and North Africa region as well as India. He also has an influential role in the government of Dubai. “In business, philanthropy and civic life, Mohamed is a true leader,” says Fr. [Stephen] Sundborg. “It will be a great sight to watch him accept this honor from his alma mater.”

Moon’s business links with North Korea go back several years. A 1998 International Herald Tribune report noted that

The Unification Church is using an invitation for its song-and-dance troupe Little Angels to perform in the North as an opportunity to talk about investment, church officials said Friday. The group is to arrive in Pyongyang on Saturday, led by Pak Bo Hi, right-hand man of the Unification Church’s founder, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and a controversial figure here who risked imprisonment in Seoul by attending the funeral of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in 1994.

The Unification Church, whose Tongil Group ranks about 35th in size among South Korean conglomerates, appears to have Seoul’s permission to discuss possible investments with North Korea. Tongil, which means “unification” in Korean, owns factories and a chain of small stores in the South.

In 2000, the Tribune reported a deal with Fiat to operate in the country:

The project culminates years of effort on the part of Mr. Moon, his church and Tongil to enter the largely untapped North Korean market. Mr. Moon, despite a previous record of anti-communism, met North Korea’s former leader, Kim Il Sung, in Pyongyang in 1991.

…But Mr. Moon appears to have gained a special niche in the North through frequent expression of a desire for reunification of the peninsula through peaceful means.

“We must find a love that will benefit both sides,” he said in Seoul last week, adding that it was “heaven’s desire that North Korea and South Korea can be united.” His Unification Church “is an organization you can deal with,” said Aidan Foster-Carter, a specialist on Korea at Leeds University in England, explaining why North Korean leaders were willing to deal with Mr. Moon’s organization.

“Lots of anti-communists have changed their minds.”

Moon’s involvements in North Korea are also explored in this 2005 essay by Rory O’Connor.

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From Interfax:

Former Byelorussian Parliamentary Speaker Stanislav Shushkevich has said that he has nothing to do with the Church of Unification of Sun Myung Moon, but that he does agree with some of its principles.

“As for the church established by Moon, I have never had anything to do with it. But I find the principles that it professes and that I know of attractive,” he told Interfax on Monday…”It is true that I have met Sun Myung Moon, but in relation to his active secular life, not along religious lines,”

Shushkevich’s links to Moon had been featured in a local TV documentary; doubtless, this was at the behest of the dictator Lukashenko, who has been trying to discredit Shushkevich for years (Belarus takes a hard line against minority religions, and the Unification Church is banned. In return, Lukashenko enjoys the unqualified endorsement of the Orthodox Church, as I blogged here). However, the idea that Moon as an “active secular life” distinct from his religious activities is a bit of a stretch. Here’s Shushkevich and Moon in 2006:

The Opening Ceremony for the Cheon Jeong Gung [a Unificationist museum] was held at Cheon Jeong Gung on Mt. Cheonseong in Chung Pyung world village on June 13, 2006…This ceremony was the event to put an end to God’s pain and suffering, that all humankind has been dreaming of for a long time. It was a day that the whole spirit world were dancing in joy. It was a ceremony of victory, happiness, and hope.

…Around 300 representatives and leaders from around the world (including some former presidents, Members of Parliament and Peace Ambassadors) participated in the Congratulatory Banquet for the Cheon Jeong Gung Entrance together with True Parents and True Children.

Dr. Thomas Walsh, International Secretary-General of IIFWP as the MC gave the opening remarks which were followed by the offering of flowers to True Parents by Mr. and Mrs. Stanislav Shushkevich, former Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus. This was followed by the Cake Cutting by True Parents.

Archbishop George A. Stallings [see my blog entry here – RB] offered an Invocation where many people from different religious backgrounds prayed and became one in heart.

Hyun-jin nim spoke to the participants. At first he read from True Father’s speech titled: ‘The Mission of the Clan Messiah in the Revolutionary Era after the Coming of Heaven’…. His words mostly welcomed the participants as they all cheered loudly and with warm applause, repeating loudly the words that Hyun-jin nim said, ‘Hallelujah’, ‘Hallelujah, God!’, ‘Hallelujah, True Parents!’, and ‘Hallelujah, Cheon Il Guk!’.

Shushkevich is also an enthusiast of Moon’s plan for an inter-religious council at the UN. And just two months ago:

Former President of Belarus and member of the [United Federation for Peace] Presiding Council HE Stanislav Shushkevich was among those offering congratulations to the 1,634 couples participating in the July 5 World Peace Blessing celebrated in Cheonan Korea by Father and Mother Moon. It was an entirely festive and happy moment, with thousands of well-wishers in attendance as the couples – some newlywed and others rededicating their unions – exchanged rings and recited vows of peace and fidelity.

…Dr. Shushkevich added a personal note of thanks for Rev. Moon’s committed work to oppose communism, efforts which eventually laid the seeds for the break up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. “I had the privilege to be at the World Peace Blessing in 1992, when I was still head of state of Belarus,” he explained, “At that time we were so happy because of our new found freedoms. But looking back now fifteen years later I can say that freedom alone is not enough: we must have strong families and a strong moral structure if our nations are to prosper.”

The accompanying picture shows Shushkevich wearing some kind of ceremonial stole.

Shushkevich has also worked to promote Moon in Lithuania:

His Excellency Stanislav Shushkevich, the former President of Belarus, introduced UPF Founder Father Moon to the 500 delegates who had assembled at the Palace Forum in central Vilnius. He recalled Dr. Moon’s lifelong service for the cause of peace, praised his accomplishments in strengthening marriage and family, acknowledging that divorce, family breakdown and youth alienation were rampant in the former Soviet republics.

…Father Pavel Paulilius offered the invocation, underscoring the need for spiritual values and the importance of respect and cooperation among people of all faiths.

Of course, Shushkevich is far from being the only politician to have accepted a role in Moon’s plans. I looked at a few others recently.

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Staying with Serbia:

Police believes Danijel Jakupek, suspected of committing a double murder in Novi Banovci, had planned the crime.

Interior Ministry (MUP) Chief Inspector Zoran Lukoviæ, who is in charge of the investigation, says that the crime might have been a part of a ritual.

The headless bodies of a man and his five-year-old nephew had been recovered from the Danube; according to Lukovic

“The murders were not committed for the sake of the murder, rather they are typical of a cult-inspired ritual. Everything we found in the suspect’s house points to that conclusion,” Lukoviæ said.

“What we could see from the literature we found there and judging by the manner he organized his living space, we could say that satanism and witchcraft were at work there, the philosophy leading to auto-aggression or acts of aggression towards someone else,” he explained.

Locals failed to notice anything odd about Jakupek because

…people in Serbia “are usually poorly informed of cults and sects.”

Lukovic, in contrast, is an expert, and his book Sects—Handbook for Self-Defense is used in a police academy. Not everyone, however, is impressed. In 2005 it was reported that

The Belgrade Youth Initiative for Human Rights announced that it has pressed criminal charges against Zoran Lukovic, a member of the Belgrade criminal police, for inciting racial, religious and ethnic hatred. In the charge, the YIHR shows that in his books and public speeches, Lukovic has referred to several smaller churches as sects and to their followers as manipulators, mentally ill, alcoholics and drug addicts who will end up in psychiatric institutions or the cemetery. The YIHR is demanding an investigation of Lukovic’s book…

Forum 18 also notes that

July 2003 – Police Captain and self proclaimed sect expert Zoran Lukovic published, in the Novi Sad daily newspaper Dnevnik, a series of articles where he portrayed many religious communities in Serbia in pejorative terms. (Dnevnik 20-31. July 2003).

Unsurprisingly, Lukovic reportedly has links with the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), and he writes for its periodical Pravoslavlje. This site has some background:

Pravoslavlje, a periodical published by the SOC…proposes passing of a “law on the Church” instead of a law on the freedom of religion…Numerous churches and religious communities, mostly Protestant, are considered religious sects or cults. Intense intolerance, even unveiled aggression towards these “cults” persists. “Serbian people are subject to systematic and planned evil, as has been justly observed by Bishop Nikolaj: this is a spiritual genocide committed by numerous cults – Protestant, satanic and those coming from the Far East,” says Pravoslavlje. A fear that a Western conspiracy might commit a spiritual genocide of the Serbian people is being spread via this periodical, fear of genocide to be carried out by religious cults. “There is a plan to systematically cover the whole area of Serbia and Montenegro with a net of cults.”

That last sentence is apparently a quote by Lukovic. The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia has further extracts:

Zoran Lukovic, a police captain and a contributor to Pravoslavlje, defines a sect in the following way: “A sect is any social group that, regardless of its way of registration, its form of organization and the number of members, treacherously abuses knowledge, ignorance or a situation of weakness of individuals, resulting in physical or psychological consequences for the individual. This means that sects take advantage of someone’s ignorance, illness, weakness, loneliness, old age, youth, etc.” The definition of sects is very wide and is often applied to other groups that the ruling circles disfavor. For example, in 2002, a graffiti saying “Sectarians, get out of Serbia” appeared on the door of the Helsinki committee. Among others, sects include (national or international) groups that perform “experiments on the brain, genetic engineering, human organs trading, prostitution, human, arms and drugs trafficking, and in these times work on the human psyche”. Captain Lukovic sees the solution to the problem of sects in “defining the criminal act of disturbing public order, but qualified for a religious object, prescribing sentences for unqualified doctors and mental manipulation. A law should be passed on religious communities and civic associations, because all thes einformal groups are sects if they perform sectarian work.

A somewhat obscure group called the “European Watch against Religious Cleansing” (EWARC) has made further allegations against Lukovic and a neuropsychiatrist named Bratislav Petrovic; however, I have not been able to find any confirmation from other sources for their claims.

(Incidentally, just because I am sceptical of much “anti-cult” rhetoric, it doesn’t therefore follow that certain groups are not a cause for concern. This 1996 paper, by Benjamin Beit-Hallami, raises the problem of academics who have been too quick to abandon a critical perspective.)

(Hat tip: Bulldada Newsblog)

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News from Serbia:

A Serbian Orthodox bishop who has been barred from Montenegro on suspicion of aiding war crimes fugitives pitched a tent at the border on Tuesday and said he was going on hunger strike in protest.

The United Nations tribunal in The Hague has put Bishop Filaret on a list of people suspected of helping four ethnic Serb suspects from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s evade justice.

…When Filaret tried to enter the country again on Tuesday morning, he was stopped by some 20 policemen. He returned at noon, pitched a tent on no-man’s land, complete with a power generator, and put up a banner saying “Hunger Strike Day 1”.

“I will stay here until my requests are fulfilled, or until my life ends,” Filaret said, sitting on a wicker armchair at the Rance crossing, a few metres from the Montenegrin border sign.

Filaret wants to enter the country as part of his diocese is there; without his presence, he fears that the rival Montenegrin Orthodox Church and Jehovah’s Witnesses will make headway. Filaret has been dogged by allegations of helping war-criminals for several years – he argues (a) that he’s innocent and (b) that it wouldn’t matter if he were guilty. As he explained in 2003:

“I will file a suit before the international court against them (the European Union). I did not provide shelter to anyone, and they should prove when Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were at my place,” he told Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA.

“I would have been happy to host them and help them, because they are brave sons of the Serb nation, whom I love and respect,” Bishop Filaret, whose secular name is Jelenko Micevic, added.

A recent BBC Monitoring report has further details:

Bishop Filaret is remembered…for welcoming Vojislav Seselj in Mileseva Monastery in the past and for giving his blessing to Tomislav Nikolic [deputy chairman of the Serbian Radical Party – SRS] to win an election. There were many who reproached the bishop of Mileseva for openly supporting Milosevic in the run-up to the elections  of the year 2000, of which he repented at the SPC Congress and begged forgiveness from all those whom his statements had offended or saddened.

Selelj is currently at the Hague awaiting trial, and he has asked for Filaret to be allowed to come to him to administer communion. Selelj founded the Serbian Radical Party, and he has enjoyed links with Jean-Marie Le Pen. Critics allege that Filaret’s rise to the episcopate was due to his political connections:

Until early July (1999) Filaret was a low ranking priest in a Belgrade church in Zemun municipality. The Serbian Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj, coalition partners with Milosevic, hold power in Zemun. Then out of the blue Filaret was appointed an episcope (Bishop?) of Milesevo at a ceremony attended by Patriarch Pavle and, very unusually, by high- ranking state officials. The presence of government figures at the ceremony was interpreted as a sure sign the regime was working to strenghten its influence in the Church.

Since has appointment, Filaret has “advocated” on behalf of the Milosevic regime in the state controlled media, praising the present authorities for their good government.

In the early nineties, Filaret was something of a media star pushing his extreme Serbian nationalist views. On one occasion he appeared on television holding a skull in his hands, which he claimed belonged to the Serbian child killed by Croats. He also liked to pose for photographers in his priestly attire, but sporting a rifle.

Filaret also has a good line in sarcasm (at least, we hope it’s sarcasm). Back to that BBC report:

When they asked him where the most wanted fugitive war crimes indictees were hiding, the bishop of Mileseva replied that “Karadzic was most probably in Iraq and he believed that Mladic was with [Osama] Bin Ladin, keeping himself fit to defend Kosovo, God willing.”

The current stand-off with Montenegro may take some time to be resolved: reports describe the bishop as “portly”.

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Staying with Russia, here’s one I missed from a few weeks ago: back in June, it was reported that yet another journalist had been shot:

[Andrei] Kalitin, 37, was shot in the shoulder Wednesday evening as he was leaving his home to meet with a colleague, according to local media reports. He has worked as a special correspondent for the investigative journalism program “Spetsrassledovaniye” (Special Investigation) on Russia’s national television Channel One since 2006.

…For the past four months, Kalitin had been working on a book alleging mafia involvement in the aluminum business. The book, titled Mafia in Black, is to be released in August. Kalitin told Gazeta that the week before the attack, his phone would ring in the early morning but when he would pick it up, the caller on the other end would hang up, Gazeta reported.

Kalitin is a former reporter for “Sovershenno Sekretno” (Top Secret), an independent anti-corruption television program produced in the 1990s by legendary Russian journalist Artyom Borovik.

The main subject of Kalitin’s book is to be the Russian-Israeli businessman Michael Cherney. This is of interest to this blog because he finances the right-wing “Jerusalem Summit”, which brings together neo-conservatives like Daniel Pipes with Christian Zionists to strategize on the removal of Palestinians from the West Bank (See my recent blog entry here. His Michael Cherney Foundation also made headlines last year when it financed an “Intelligence Summit” which unveiled tape recordings of Saddam Hussein allegedly plotting an attack on the USA). Cherney responded to the suggestion that he might have had something to do with Kalitin’s injury in July:

Unfortunately, it is yet another helping from the bag of tricks that my ex-partner Oleg Deripaska has stooped to. After I filed a suit against him in England in November 2006, he told his multi-leveled security service to launch an international campaign to discredit me.

…As for Kalitin, it is a question whether there has been an assassination attempt at all. He requested me for an interview, and I sent him and his publisher OLMA, which contracted the book, an official letter. I told them that I knew who had actually commissioned the book and that I was not about to be a party to smearing my own name, and that I would sue OLMA for defamation. After that, someone allegedly shot Kalitin. Independent Moscow media reported that he had simply injured his arm, refused medical aid, and went to police to report that only a day later. No one had ever found the cartridge or the bullet. The whole assassination story was just a publicity trick to draw attention to this cheap publication in OLMA (though someone had spent a lot of money on it).

One wonders if the 1997 fate of journalist Vadim Birukov was also “a publicity trick”; according to this CNN report, he

…was found dead in his garage, his body badly beaten, his mouth taped. Birukov’s Business in Russia was the first independent magazine to expose organized crime’s role in aluminum in any detail, and he had attacked the Chernoys [i.e. Michael and his brother Lev] mercilessly. The culprits were never found.

Cherney has been dogged by criminal allegations for some time over his rise to prominence in the Russian “Aluminium Wars” (see below), and he is banned from entry into the USA and some other countries. However, investigations have all floundered, and Cherney insists that he has been smeared by his enemies.

Cherney has indeed been very unlucky in some of his associations. One of his close associates in Israel was the late Anton Malevsky, who had been accused of running a mafia group in Moscow. This allegation forms part of an upcoming trial in Germany; according to a recent report in Der Spiegel:

Alexander A. and two other defendants are charged with having laundered about €8 million for “Izmailovskaya,” a Russian Mafia organization, through real estate deals in Germany. Investigators are convinced that Alexander A., the good Christian, is one of the leaders of the Moscow Mafia syndicate, which they believe has earned a fortune with contract killings and protection rackets.

…A man named Malevsky is believed to have founded Izmailovskaya, named after Izmailovo, a Moscow neighborhood, in those early post-Soviet days. According to the prosecutors, the group specialized in extorting protection money and committing contract killings during the brutal struggles that followed the deregulation of the aluminum industry. They also believe that the organization worked for men who are now among Russia’s richest oligarchs and invest their billions in Western construction outfits or companies in the automotive industry. Their brutal henchmen at Izmailovskaya are believed to control assets worth about $800 million today.

According to the prosecutors, Izmailovskaya’s leader, Malevsky, moved part of this fortune to the British Virgin Islands, where it was invested in shady companies or deposited into the bank accounts of high-ranking Izmailovskaya members. “The system was designed to conceal the sources of the funds,” says Bettina Vetter, one of the Stuttgart prosecutors.

According to that CNN report again:

In March 1995 two private eyes in Israel were indicted for plotting to kill Michael Cherney and his pal Anton Malevsky. (The assassins were equipped with a silenced pistol and a $100,000 contract.)

Some years earlier, Malevsky had allegedly been sponsored for a US visa by Cherney’s Blonde Management Corp. The Corp’s manager was the nephew of Cherney’s old business partner Semyon Kislin, who has been linked by the FBI to a Russian godfather in prison in the USA, although he denies the claim. In 1998, Israel decided to deport Malevsky, as the country had done in the past with mafia figures (most famously Meyer Lansky, an incident depicted in fictionalised form in The Godfather Part II), and he died in a parachuting accident in 2001. In 2004, Cherney and fellow Israeli-Russian billionaire Arkady Gaydamak (who was blogged by me here) were pleased to see the forced resignation of Israeli police investigator Moshe Mizrahi, who had been accused of a “witch hunt” against innocent Russian businessmen in Israel on behalf of his friends.

Cherney was recently profiled in the London Observer, where he explained the feud with Deripaska:

Cherney emigrated to Israel, from where he has conducted his business since 1994. Meanwhile the ‘aluminium wars’ raged in Russia, a struggle from which Rusal is now emerging as the world’s number one aluminium producer. ‘In 2001, I sold my stake to the Deripaska group,’ he says. ‘I’m out of the aluminium business now, except for the money owed to me from this stock sale.’

…Cherney says ‘[Deripaska] panicked when he heard in 2001 that I was going to sell my stake in Rusal to MDM Bank for $1bn. He met me in London. So I sold the stake to him instead, and the contract guaranteed payment in three years. He met me in secret in Vienna in 2003 and I told him he had violated the terms. Then he stopped answering the phone.

The Financial Times, meanwhile, gives us Deripaska’s take:

Mr Deripaska denies he ever worked in partnership with Mr Cherney. Mr Cherney says he is merely seeking to enforce his rights. While the two disagree over their roles, their tale tells much of how Russian business has evolved from the early 1990s when, according to one insider, businessmen queued in hotel lobbies to win Mr Cherney’s blessing for their business deals.

…Mr Deripaska maintains that what happened in the 1990s in the Russian aluminium business cannot be compared with any other country. “We had different conditions. It was anarchy.” But he insists Mr Cherney had nothing to do with his business: “The role of [Michael] was very specific,” he says. “This person had no relation to my business.”

However, in 2003, both men were named in a legal action against Deripaska; American Lawyer noted that:

During the so-called “Aluminum Wars” of the 1990s, rival Russian oligarchs fought violently for control of that nation’s second-largest industry. The losers of the Aluminum Wars don’t trust Russian courts, so they have carried the fight to tribunals around the world. Their allegations read like a post-Cold War thriller. As the claimants tell the story, billionaire Oleg Deripaska and alleged mafia boss Mikhail Chernoi stripped exiled oligarch Mikhail Zhivilo of the Novokuznetsk aluminum plant by bribing and strong-arming officials to file false murder charges against him (hence his exile), and to make false claims that drove his company into bankruptcy. The claimants are companies that had signed contracts with the Novokuznetsk factory before Deripaska allegedly rigged its bankruptcy and bought it on the cheap. According to Deripaska, the claimants themselves are controlled by Zhivilo.

A 2000 Jamestown Foundation report adds:

The plaintiffs charge, among other things, that in 1995, at the height of a battle for control of the Krasnoyarsk Aluminium Factory, Chernoy ordered the murder of Felix Lvov. Lvov represented the interests of AIOC, the U.S. metals company and Trans World rival. Chernoy, the plaintiffs claim, used Anton Malevsky, reputedly a leader of the Izmailova organized crime group, to carry out the order. According to the suit, Chernoy and Deripaska also sought to wrest control over NkAZ away from MIKOM, a company run by Mikhail and Yuri Zhivilo. Soon after the Lvov murder, Deripaska warned that Mikhail Zhivilo would share Lvov’s fate if he refused to cooperate with Chernoy and Trans World. The suit also alleges that, in the fall of 1995, Mikhail Zhivilo was forced to meet with Chernoy in Tel Aviv to discuss “krysha” (“roof,” slang for protection payments) for the following year. Malevsky allegedly attended the meeting during which Zhivilo was warned that if he stopped making protection payments he would have to deal with Malevsky “and his partner Yaponchik”–an apparent reference to Vyacheslav Ivankov, the Russian mafia boss jailed in New York in 1996 on federal conspiracy and extortion charges. In March 1996, the suit alleges, an attack was carried out on Zhivilo, after which he received yet another warning from Chernoy. According to the complaint, Zhivilo ran into Chernoy by chance in 1998 at a soccer match in France, and Chernoy again brought up Malevsky to threaten Zhivilo into cooperating with Deripaska (Vedomosti, December 21).

Zhivilo is currently a fugitive in Europe; the case was eventually settled out-of-court (see here). In July, a Zhivilo associate was found guilty by a Russian court of plotting a political assassination.

Another former associate of Cherney and Deripaska has also made serious allegations, as was noted by the Hoover Digest in 2004:

Dzhalol Khaidarov, a former close associate of Mikhail Chernoy, a partner of Deripaska’s with close ties to organized crime, described, in an interview with Le Monde, how Russian Aluminum became so large: “You ask why Russian Aluminum gained one or another factory. They will say that the shares were purchased. But if you look, you’ll find that the former shareholder is in prison, became a ‘drug addict,’ or disappeared. When I worked with Mikhail Chernoy, the group gave bribes of 35 to 40 million dollars every year. It was always possible to buy a judge, a governor, or a law. In the early 1990s, they murdered. Now they prefer to file a case or put someone in prison. They can do anything.”

Deripaska is married to Boris Yeltsin’s granddaughter, and his activities appear to be tolerated by one particularly shady character – a certain Vladimir “Polonium” Putin.

Name variations: Ismajlovokaya, Izmailovskaya; Izmailovo Mafia; Izmaylovo Gang; Michael Cherney; Michael Chernoy; Michael Chornoy; Michael Chernoi; Michael Tcherny; Michael Chyorny; Mikhail Cherney; Mikhail Chernoy; Mikhail Chornoy; Mikhail Chernoi; Mikhail Tcherny; Mikhail Chyorny.

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The London Times reports:

…Last week authorities in the Arctic city of Murmansk released Larissa Arap, an opposition journalist whose five-week detention in two psychiatric hospitals caused a storm of protest.

Arap, who is a supporter of Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion turned fierce Kremlin critic, was confined after publishing an exposé in which she described how staff at a mental hospital were abusing young patients, often with electric shocks. During a routine medical test to renew her driving licence, she was asked by a doctor if she had written the article. Arap defended her story. The doctor called the police and had her forcibly detained. In hospital she was regularly given drugs and last week she was so feeble that she could barely speak.

…Similar treatment was used against Sergei Ablamsky, a lawyer in Bryansk, 250 miles southwest of Moscow, when he came into conflict with a prosecutor he accused of corruption. Ablamsky was taken in handcuffs to a psychiatric institute where he was held for four weeks.

This ties in nicely with a blog entry I wrote in July, in which I noted how psychiatry in Russia is being used to persecute members of new religious movements, and to spread panic about “satanism”. The notorious Serbsky Institute is still in business, and some of its staff have remained in place since the Soviet period. Reporters Without Borders adds a quote:

The president of the Independent Psychiatric Association, Yury Savenko, said he feared punitive hospitalisation could become more common following the adoption of the law on extremism.

Name variations: Larisa Arap; Yuri Savenko

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Bishop of Chester and staff indulge in “Jew-hating for kicks”

“Brainwashing” at Liverpool Cathedral

Richard Dawkins describes “the Jewish concept of God the creator”

Several weeks ago the London Times’s religion blog Faith Central decided to list the “30 Most Influential Religious Blogs”. At number 28 is Irene Lancaster, a British academic who recently emigrated to Israel, and whose main contribution to public debate is to assert – over and over again – that institutions and individuals who are critical of Israel are motivated by anti-Semitism. Over the past two years Lancaster has become a familiar figure in the British media, popping up on programmes like BBC Radio Manchester’s Thought for the Week and in mainstream religious magazines like The Tablet, which refers to her as “one of the United Kingdom’s leading Jewish academics” – a rather astonishing title given that her academic publication record (so far as I can see) seems pretty average, consisting of some translations and a couple of books on aspects of medieval Jewish thought. Lancaster also enjoys close relations with some high-profile figures, such as former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, and she is the Interfaith Advisor and Academic Liaison Officer for Anglican Friends of Israel (an organisation which has as a patron David Marsland, a university professor who believes that the UK should be a police state with summary executions of terrorist suspects and imprisonment for dissenting journalists).

But what exactly has Lancaster done to enjoy these plaudits? Given the way that she resorts to the most extreme and hyperbolic personal abuse, it is surprising that she is taken seriously at all. Take, for example, her attack on the Bishop of Chester and his staff. In June of last year, Lancaster discovered that Stephen Sizer, an Anglican vicar who supports Palestinian rights and is very critical of Israel, would be giving a presentation at Chester Cathedral. Lancaster wrote to the Bishop, informing him that he should cancel the invitation on the grounds that Sizer was motivated by an

anti-Jewish Christian theology of contempt, on which I am unfortunately an expert

and that allowing him to speak

could lead to attacks on the Jewish community and therefore constitute a security threat.

To Lancaster’s dismay, her demands that Sizer should be made to shut up cut no ice, despite her self-proclaimed “expert” status, and she received a firm letter from the Cathedral office:

Thank you for contacting us about Stephen Sizer’s July lecture in the Cathedral. We are aware that his views are controversial, but we are also conscious of his desire to speak for some highly vulnerable people in Israel/Palestine, whose voices are too seldom heard in this country. He has up-to-date and first-hand experience of what is going on in the Land, and the issues he raises are significant. Our inviting him here does not necessarily mean, of course, that we will agree with everything he says, and there will be a chance for people to ask questions of him on the night, and to hear his response.

What particularly offended Lancaster was that the letter did not come from the Bishop himself:

Funny how all the Bishops in Manchester can write to you themselves, as if they are friends (which most of them are), and the former Archbishop of Canterbury can actually give you an exclusive for your blog, and yet the lower down the hierarchy you go, the more pompous and buck-passing they get.

This discourtesy to someone as important as Lancaster clearly enraged her:

The most pathetic aspect of Chester’s decision is that they have given it the stamp of authenticity by saying their Bishop was consulted and agreed. For a historian such as myself, this resonates of what Holocaust commentator, Hannah Arendt, called ‘the banality of evil’.

They are all little men with no purpose in life, so they latch on to Jew-hating for kicks and pretend that they are sorry for the Palestinians. Just as Hitler and his ilk also had no purpose, so they latched onto Jew-hating for kicks and pretended they were sorry for all those poor Germans.

I think commentary on that would be superfluous.

A second target for Lancaster’s wrath is Giles Fraser, a vicar and Guardian columnist. Last year, she wrote about her friend Andrew Shanks, a canon at Manchester Cathedral:

…Andrew has done two things that make him a towering figure in my eyes. He has publicly taken his friend (and former teacher), the [Archbishop of Canterbury], to task for voting for divestment from Caterpillar at February’s Synod. He has also brought bruiser and media pundit, Rev Dr. Giles Fraser (his former student) to see me, to sort of apologize for his verbal onslaught on rabbis, broadcast on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.

However, Rashomon-like, her account of the meeting later changes slightly in a comment she left on Ruth Gledhill’s blog:

…having met Giles Fraser (actually, he turned up at my house on one occasion without prior consultation) and having been witness to his attempts to bully me around to his own way of thinking on a number of issues about which he is actually very ignorant, I can’t help feeling that one of these days he may need a lawyer himself.

So, from this version we are to infer that Fraser decided to go round to her house uninvited and unwanted, while according to her original account Fraser was brought by a friend to “apologise”. She has also made similar hints about physical intimidation against Stephen Sizer:

And yes, I may even take Sizer up on his offer to meet down south, to have a chat, but I shall make sure to take a body-guard with me.

(Sizer’s response to her piece on him can be seen here)

Lancaster’s way of proceeding is apparently shared by her husband, Brian L. Lancaster (also known as “Les Lancaster”), a transpersonal psychologist who writes on the psychology of mysticism. On one occasion, the two of them decided to attend a talk given by Stephen Sizer at Liverpool Cathedral:

Les said that he was an expert on brainwashing techniques and that is what we had seen this evening in a very cleverly organised immoral and one-sided presentation, aimed at demonisation. The title may have been ‘Morally Responsible Investment’, but the speaker had been anything but morally responsible this evening, Les stated.

So, Brian Lancaster sees a presentation on a political issue, and he profoundly disagrees with the speaker. Other people seem to like the talk more than him, so he decides that the speaker must have employed “brainwashing techniques”. We should believe this because he is “an expert”. To see an academic use their professional status in this way is just embarrassing.

However, it’s not just on the subject of Israel where Irene Lancaster feels that her “expert” status means that she can make bizarre re-interpretations of what other people think. Consider, for example, this quote concerning Richard Dawkins. The source is an interview with Ruth Gledhill:

She says: “Dawkins’ description is definitely Jewishly OK, whether he likes it or not. Dawkins has tried to describe some sort of power, even intelligence, which does not include the word ‘God.’ The word for the Lord in Hebrew is Y-H-V-H-, which is a transliteration of the consonants in Hebrew which sound like vowels. In other words, if you named that power, you might fall into the trap of thinking you really understood it.”

Maimonides lived from 1135 to 1204 and influenced Thomas Aquinas and the whole Christian tradition. “So what Dawkins is describing here is the Jewish concept of God the creator,” says Irene.

UPDATE (13 January 2008): More today.

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