Bartholomew's Notes

Once again, George Weigel provides a hack with a column-load of neo-con platitudes masquerading as scholarship. Over the last week his new book has been puffed by critically-challenged reviewers in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post (discussed by me a couple of days ago); now Rod Dreher shows the readership of the Dallas Morning News how to fawn, in an exclusive interview. Weigel sits on the board of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, with which Dreher is greatly enamoured: when the IRD published a wretched report last year denouncing mainline Christian criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, Dreher was the chief cheerleader for this obnoxious attempt to silence any support for the Palestinians.

But enough ranting. Over to Weigel, in apocalyptic mode:

Europe is dying in the most literal sense. Europe is depopulating itself in a manner not seen since the Black Death of the 14th century.

What, you mean people are developing huge buboes, coughing up blood and dropping down dead in the streets? Or do you mean that the population of Europe has a declining birth rate? I would call the latter “depopulating itself in a different manner from the Black Death”. But then, I’m not a best-selling author and pundit. Let’s look at some more sensible rhetoric from an EU report (bearing in mind that EU does not equal Europe, and that an EU-wide average must obscure big regional differences):

The EU’s fertility rate fell to 1.48 in 2003, below the level needed to replace the population (2.1 children per woman). The paper shows that the EU’s population will fall from 469.5 million in 2025 to 468.7 million in 2030. By contrast, the US population will increase by 25.6 per cent between 2000 and 2025. However, demographic decline is already here: in one third of the EU regions and in most of the regions of the new member states the population was already falling in the late 90s.

Hardly the end of the world, especially in the context of global overpopulation. Another factor in European demography is a declining death rate – making Weigel’s “Black Death” analogy even less appropriate. So, what’s the cause of this European non-fecundity? According to the EU report:

It is the result of constraints on families’ choices: late access to employment, job instability, expensive housing and lack of incentives (family benefits, parental leave, child care, equal pay). Incentives of this kind can have a positive impact on the birth rate and increase employment, especially female employment, as certain countries have shown.

But why have all that when you can just hark back to a religious culture that makes it duty for women to have lots of children? That seems to be Weigel’s solution, as he ponders causes of his own:

A useful place to start is the 19th century, when European high culture jettisoned the thing that had formed its culture for nearly two millennia, namely the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Moses and Jesus. Europe chose instead a set of ideas that centered around the notion that the God of the Bible was an oppressor, and only by overthrowing him would humans be free, mature and capable of creating a truly human future.

Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have bad consequences. One of the results of this bad idea was the dramatic secularization of Europe, and within that I think you’ll find the sources of Europe’s contemporary malaise, its despair, its profound cynicism.

It’s the same old tired narrative. Why is it that Europeans appear to have different, and fewer, religious beliefs than the USA? Answer: because the morally inferior Europeans have decided to set themselves against the obvious truths of Christianity out of moral perversity. Europeans (and implicitly, European women?) are selfish:

If you are focused on me, myself and I all the time, you are eventually going to bore yourself to death. It’s only when we understand – and this is part of what becoming an adult means – that living outside of ourselves, to live for the well-being of others, that we fulfill ourselves. Cultures and societies can forget that, too.

Dreher of course fails to ask Weigel for data to back up the claim of American Christian generosity versus European atheist self-centredness. Instead, having imbibed these deep thoughts, Dreher invokes another overrated neo-con, Bernard Lewis, and prods Weigel in the direction of European Islam. Weigel:

I was in the Galleria Borghese in Rome in December, looking at four fantastic sculptures by Bernini. And I had the odd thought, “Is this going to be here in 60 years?” What is going to happen to all this fantastic representational art if Europe is overrun by a religious conviction that finds representational art unacceptable?

Perhaps the more threatening aspect of this is it seems that the forms of Islam taking hold in Europe right now are not pacific but aggressive. The interaction of Islamic immigrants with European culture is not producing a softer form of Islam, and it’s not forcing Islam to grapple with questions like, Can there be an Islamic case for religious tolerance, for social pluralism? It’s doing precisely the opposite. It’s hardening the edges.

Yes, the Taliban are about to take over Europe. But why does the phrase “Yellow peril” suddenly come to mind? No one would deny that there is a real problem with Islamic fundamentalism in Europe, but Weigel is merely parroting a stereotype for an American audience. Does he know anything about the different kinds of Islam to be found in Europe? Or how much nominalism there is among immigrants with a Muslim background (a factor Weigel is likely to have overlooked, since irreligion is immoral)? Or how Muslim immigration needs to be compared with non-Muslim immigration?

But it’s not just Europeans who are letting the side down: what about all those blue Euro-Americans?

…a lot of our high culture and a lot of blue America is European. It’s far more secularized than the rest of the country and far less confident in the capacity of biblical faith, be it Jewish, Protestant or Catholic, to inform and shape the great public issues of the day. It’s more materialist, more consumption-driven and, frankly, less reproductive. All you have to do is look at the demographics of red-state America and blue-state America to see who’s having more kids. What we see in Europe today may be a preview of our own challenges maybe in the second quarter of the 21st century.

So the blue states are “less confident” in “biblical faith” (liberal religion doesn’t count, since it’s bad). And that’s nothing to do with bullying creationists, arrogant theocrats, venal televangelists, racist Christian Zionists…etc., etc. And what about the red states’ rejection of the European Greco-Roman legacy (recently noted by Camille Paglia in Salon), including the Enlightenment? Is not that a “bad idea”? And since when did being “consumption-driven” become a blue-state vice? Just how are conservatives (including conservative Christians) substantially less “consumer-driven”?

In conclusion, Weigel takes refuge in self-righteousness:

…if we do not tend to our own cultural seed corn, if we continue to think that democracy and the market are machines that can run by themselves and all you have to do is keep the machinery straight. It takes a certain kind of people possessed of certain virtues, certain habits of mind and heart, to make freedom and democracy work.

Excuse me? Do Freedom and democracy “not work” in Europe? And just how are these the virtues of the US Christian right?

This is too much. But with Weigel singing the same tune as Pope Benedict, his distortions and sensationalism will likely be the stock-in-trade of conservative hacks for a long time to come.

(Dreher link tipped from Christianity Today)

UPDATE: Timothy Garton Ash has a more thoughtful article in the Guardian that addresses some of the same issues as Weigel. His conclusion:

[Benedict] could live to see the European Union in 2015. This Europe would probably be more Islamic than now in its poorer parts, and more secular than ever in its richer ones. Whether that would also be a better Europe is a subject for another column.

Whether I end up agreeing with him or not, I have hopes that Ash is preparing a rather more nuanced assessment than Weigel’s efforts.

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WND reports on “one of the most significant Christian publishing events of our era”: a new edition, in modern English, of Archbishop James Ussher’s Annals of the World, first published in 1658:

Integrating biblical history (around 15 percent of the text is from the Bible) with secular sources, Ussher wrote this masterpiece. Considered not only a literary classic, but also an accurate reference, “The Annals of the World” was so highly regarded for its preciseness that the timeline from it was included in the margins of many King James Version Bibles throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

However, WND fails to mention sole reason for which the work is (perhaps unfairly) remembered today: it is the book in which Ussher made his claim that the universe was created on October 23 4004 BC. In fact, WND‘s ad for the book is an expurgated version of one that appears on the publisher’s website:

Considered not only a literary classic, but also an accurate reference, The Annals of the World was so highly regarded for its preciseness that the timeline from it was included in the margins of many King James Version Bibles throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, calling to mind the fact that the earth is only around 6,000 years old. The fact that Ussher’s chronology has been deleted from Bibles is evidence of the Church’s backsliding into the deceptive ideas of evolution.

The publisher is Master Books, an imprint of New Leaf Press

In 1996, New Leaf Press bought Master Books, which was also established in 1975. Henry Morris and Tim LaHaye founded what has come to be known as the only publishing house in the world that publishes creation-based material exclusively. Since coming in under the New Leaf Press umbrella, Master Books has had a 300% growth over its best previous year. I feel that my father would be very pleased with this purchase and with the mission statement of promoting creationism that Master Books upholds. Together the two companies publish around 35 titles a year.

The publisher does not tell us who is actually responsible for the new edition, but other sites give the honour to Larry and Marion Pierce. Larry Pierce is a long-time champion of Ussher, as in this article from the Answers in Genesis magazine Creation:

Ussher was neither charlatan nor naive; in fact, he was one of the most learned men of his day. Understanding the assumptions with which he began his calculations (particularly the one we should all begin with, namely that God’s Word is true and reliable), we can readily understand how he arrived at his date for creation. In fact, if one assumes that there are no deliberate ‘jumps’ or gaps in the later genealogies (for which the evidence in my view is inadequate), then his date is a perfectly reasonable deduction based on his detailed knowledge of and reverence for the Word of God.

Shame that reverence included a belief in religious persecution in Ireland:

The Protestants were alarmed and at the installation of the new Deputy (Sept. 1622) James Ussher, then Protestant Bishop of Meath, taking as his text, “He beareth not the sword in vain,” preached a violent sermon in favour of religious persecution. Primate Hampton wrote immediately to the preacher, reproving him for his imprudence, asking him to explain away what he had said about the sword, and advising him to spend more of his time in his own diocese of Meath, where matters were far from being satisfactory.

But actually, assuming that the Pierces have done a competent job, the new edition of Ussher’s Annals may well be a decent resource for seventeenth-century studies. Could it be that the Creationists have finally managed to produce a volume of some use?

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The late Carl Sagan, musing on the twilight of the ancient world after the murder of the pagan philosopher Hypatia in 415CE:

The glory of the Alexandrian Library is a dim memory. Its last remnants were destroyed soon after Hypatia’s death. It was as if the entire civilization had undergone some self-inflicted brain surgery, and most of its memories, discoveries, ideas and passions were extinguished irrevocably. The loss was incalculable. In some cases, we know only the tantalizing titles of the works that were destroyed. In most cases, we know that of the 123 plays of Sophocles in the Library, only seven survived. One of those seven is Oedipus Rex. Similar numbers apply to the works of Aeschylus and Euripides. It is a little as if the only surviving works of a man named William Shakespeare were Cariolanus and  A Winter’s Tale, but we had heard that he had written certain other plays, unknown to us but apparently prized in his time, works entitled Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet.”

Well, here’s some consolation at last, via The Independent:

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure – a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

…The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye – decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a “second Renaissance”.

Works by Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod have been recovered, and there is the inevitable speculation about “lost Gospels” popping up. However, Oxford University’s Oxrhynchus Papyri Project (unhappily called “POxy” for short) site does not yet appear to have been updated to reflect the breakthrough.

(Tipped from The Light of Reason)

UPDATE: Rogue Classicism has a less-dramatic account of the new discoveries; it seems our Independent hack may have got carried away a bit.

UPDATE 2: The New York Times has a piece on the subject by Sarah Lyall, and suggests that the Independent over-hyped the story.

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Judi McLeod’s Canada Free Press has another scoop on Iraq. A few months back it was all about how Saddam Hussein performed human sacrifices in Satanic rituals; now it’s Saddam’s belief in reincarnation:

Saddam believes he is the “literal reincarnation” of King Nebuchadnezzar II, according to “investigative mythologist” William Henry and others. (Stephen Wagner, Your Guide to Paranormal Phenomena Newsletter).

…In geographical terms, Saddam didn’t have to go far to find himself a “literal reincarnation”. Babylon is Iraq today.

“Saddam is saying he is the reincarnated Nebuchadnezzar,” writes Henry in Saddam Hussein, the Stairway to Heaven and the Return of Planet X. He is attempting to recreate and outdo the feats of the biblical king.”

It is well known that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has connected himself with Nebuchadnezzar. It was more than $500 million he spent in the 1980s on the reconstruction and the re-establishment of ancient Babylon–the capitol of Nebuchadnezzar. Then there are the over 60 million bricks, fashioned to place in the walls of Babylon. Each one engraved with the inscription, “To King Nebuchadnezzar in the reign of Saddam Hussein”.

Actually, the inscriptions read “The Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar was reconstructed in the era of Saddam Hussein”, but let’s not get bogged down with mere details just as we’re about to fly:

Henry also believes there is a connection between Saddam and Planet X, the alleged “12th Planet”. This phantom planet, Nibiru maintains Zecharia Sitchin in his many books on the subject, was the home of the Elohim–the gods of antiquity and Genesis–who created humanity through genetic manipulation.

(An assessment of Sitchin can be read here. Here’s his website)

“Saddam controls an asset infinitely more important and powerful than oil, or even nuclear weapons,” writes Henry. “He controls access to the temples that housed the history (of) humanity’s origins, and potentially, the secrets of stargates. Buried deep beneath the sands if Iraq are the secrets of the Shining Ones of Planet X. Saddam’s actions reveal that he knows the political value of these secrets.”

What? The piece concludes:

Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the media. A former Toronto Sun and Kingston Whig Standard columnist, she has also appeared on Newsmax.com, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and World Net Daily.

“30 years experience” and just parroting some crap from a newsletter? Is this a joke? And just who is her source, William Henry?

Henry’s complete crackpot masterwork (written before the war, it seems) can be seen here. Here’s a bit more:

While it is uncertain if Planet X is headed this way in the immediate future, one thing is certain. The return of this planet centers on the recovery of a technology once housed at Solomon’s Temple that is used to open a gateway linking Earth with far off regions of space. Recent military and political activity suggests that the world powers are jockeying for position as if the return of Planet X is imminent. The stakes are high. This planet is at the center of a biblical prophecy known as the “Day of the Lord.”

Maybe McLeod is in some sort of competition with Joseph Farah to find the most deranged wacko to puff: Henry is clearly on the same level as WND favourite Patrick “Nephilim” Heron. Website Empire of the Odd has more:

William Henry dosn’t bother to disclose where he received his degree or even what kind of degree it is. That is almost unprecedented and gives (me) reason to doubt that he is formally trained in the field.

OK, so he’s an amateur mythologist? That’s cool, so am I!

Not so long ago he mentioned something about the venerable Subliminal Research Foundation in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he supposedly worked with a team of psychiatrists and psychologists to develop “self help technologies.” Thankfully (and probably since the Subliminal Research Foundation doesn’t really exist) he pulled that text off of his web page. Kudos for doing that at least!

There are a few other sites linking Henry with the Subliminal Research Foundation. It seems to be an old business name of The Joe Land Company; Land is a subliminal-message self-help guru who is also based in Albuquerque (SRF is listed as co-author of Land’s 1987 Program Yourself For Success on a couple of second-hand dealer websites).

Henry’s other articles include:

JESUS, FDR AND THE MERU SUPER-ANTENNA
STARGATE CRUCIFICTION FROM CLOAK OF THE ALUMINATI
STARGATES, WORMHOLES AND THE BEARDED GODS OF ALL THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS

Gosh, this could keep McLeod going for weeks…

(Tipped from Cult News Network)

UPDATE: Commentator Geoff notes that McLeod is so stupid that a few weeks ago she repeated a story about Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga that had originally appeared in The Onion.

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Religion commentator George Weigel (who sits on the board of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy) has a new book out on the evils of secular Europe, The Cube and the Cathedral. Brian Carney at the Wall Street Journal offers a largely uncritical appraisal, in which all the typical neo-con anti-European obsessions are laid out as if they passed for common sense. Over to Carney, who begins with a visit to Amiens Cathedral:

At Mass last Sunday, Amiens’s gothic cathedral, the largest in France, was virtually empty…Europe’s largest churches are often unused these days, reduced to monuments for tourists to admire.

Nice to see the whole of Europe extrapolated from France. And how different is this from the decline of mainline Christianity in the USA?

In “The Cube and the Cathedral,” George Weigel describes a European culture that has become not only increasingly secular but in many cases downright hostile to Christianity. The cathedral in his title is Notre Dame, now overshadowed in cultural importance by the Arc de la Defense, the ultramodernist “cube” that dominates an office complex outside Paris.

Well, it’s certainly physically overshadowed. But is this sort of thing unique to France or Europe? Big business likes big buildings – I didn’t think this was unknown in the USA. All a bit vulgar, perhaps, but is the Arc really culturally more important? Are state funerals held at the Arc? Has someone published The Hunchback of the Arc de la Defense? And how do either the Arc or Notre Dame compare with Paris’s EuroDisney (famously termed “cultural Chernobyl” by Ariane Mnouchkine in 1992)? But to mention EuroDisney might imply criticism of American pop-culture and consumerism; far easier to invoke some mysterious and sinister “ultramodernism”.

“European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular,” Mr. Weigel writes. “That conviction and its public consequences are at the root of Europe’s contemporary crisis of civilizational morale.”

“European man” means “France”. And “contemporary crisis of civilizational morale” means “not as religious as the USA”, apparently.

Carney/Weigel then turns to the European Constitution:

“By the time the draft constitution was completed in June 2004, a grudging reference to ‘the cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance of Europe’ had been shoehorned into the preamble’s first clause,” Mr. Weigel notes derisively. This was about as much religion as Europe could stand in a constitution that runs, by Mr. Weigel’s count, to 70,000 words.

Well, seeing as the constitution is really a rather dull managerial document (that’s modernisation and bureaucratisation for you) I wouldn’t expect to see much religion in it. I know that the American Christian Right finds it offensive when official documents are not used as a bully pulpit for their imagined “Judeo-Christian tradition”, but that’s their problem, not Europeans’.

What is the deeper source of European antipathy to religion? For Mr. Weigel, the problem goes all the way back to the 14th century, when scholastics like William of Ockham argued for “nominalism.” According to their philosophy, universals–concepts such as “justice” or “freedom” and qualities such as “white” or “good”–do not exist in the abstract but are merely words that denote instances of what they describe. A current of thought was set into motion, Mr. Weigel believes, that pulled European man away from transcendent truths. One casualty was a fixed idea of human nature.

“If there is no such thing as human nature,” Mr. Weigel argues, “then there are no universal moral principles that can be read from human nature.” If there are no universal moral truths, then religion, positing them, is merely a form of oppression or myth, one from which Europe’s elites see themselves as liberated.

There always has to be a villain whose malign influence can explain in one easy sentence why it is that Europe detests all that is true and good (and disagrees with the USA on various matters, which amounts to the same thing). Rocco Buttiglione recently blamed Jacques Derrida; now we have William of Ockham, of all people, cast in the Faustian role. Why is religion less popular in Europe than it was? Don’t blame consumerism. Don’t blame modernisation. Don’t even blame the history of religious conflict in Europe. And, although attacking liberal religious figures is probably OK, don’t blame the possible shortcomings of religion itself when faced with science or critical deconstruction. And never concede the possibility that secular European values (such as, say, support for gay rights) might also be the result of moral reasoning, rather than its absence.

This is a big argument for a small book, and much more could be said to make it wholly convincing. One place to go for a fuller discussion is Richard Weaver’s “Ideas Have Consequences,” which Mr. Weigel slyly alludes to but does not cite. “The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a course of truth higher than, and independent of, man,” Weaver explained a half-century ago, “and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of humankind.”

This actually exposes the hollow utilitarian heart of the neo-con defence of religion. Religion is useful because it gets people to behave well; criticisms of (“Judeo-Christian”) religion, or alternative ways of organising human affairs, should therefore be dismissed as “immoral” rather than engaged with intellectually. Weigel then turns lurid:

Mr. Weigel is on firmer ground when he analyzes Europe’s present condition, with its low birth rates, heavy debts, Muslim immigration worries and tendency to carp from the sidelines when the fate of nations is at stake. In what is certainly the most attention-grabbing passage in an engagingly written book, Mr. Weigel sketches the worst-case scenario–the “bitter end”–for a Europe that is religiously bereft, demographically moribund and morally without a compass: “The muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St. Peter’s in Rome, while Notre-Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the Seine–a great Christian church become an Islamic museum.”

“Heavy debts”? Unlike the USA? And does secularisation have no effect on immigrant minorities? But even Carney thinks Weigel is laying it on a bit thick here:

One need not find this scenario especially plausible to feel persuaded by Mr. Weigel’s more measured arguments about Europe’s atheistic humanism. Without a religious dimension, Mr. Weigel notes, a commitment to human freedom is likely to be attenuated, too weak to make sacrifices in its name. Europe’s political elites especially, but its citizens as well, believe in freedom and democracy of course, but they are reluctant to put the “good life” on hold and put lives on the line when freedom is in need of a champion–say, in the Balkans or, especially, in Iraq. (Mr. Weigel is at pains to emphasize, however, that his analysis is not born of disenchantment over European popular opposition to the Iraq war.)

So, Europe is “too weak” to make sacrifices for freedom. But has the USA rejected mass consumerism in the name of the war effort? Are Americans demanding higher fuel prices and alternative energy sources in order to lessen dependence on Middle Eastern oil? Is there a massive revulsion against the very idea of using torture in the “war on terror”? Why is the USA open to criticism on those accounts, when American religion is supposed to be a sign that the USA is so much morally stronger than Europe?

I’m not arguing that a secular Europe has to be the glorious end point of history; and I have particular problems with the way secularisation plays out in France. But it would be nice to see American commentators discussing the phenomenon of European secularisation rationally, considering both the pros and cons. Hysterical and self-righteous screeds such as Weigel’s may make American conservatives feel good, but they do little to increase understanding.

UPDATE: Commentator David notes that Weigel’s book has also been reviewed by George Wills in the Washington Post. Wills includes a question mark in his headline as a substitute for any effort at critical thinking.

UPDATE 2: More Weigel today.

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Reuters reports on a new resolution from the sixty-first session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights:

The 53-member state forum adopted a resolution, presented by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), deploring the intensification of a “campaign of defamation” against Muslims following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

…”Stereotyping of any religion as propagating violence or its association with terrorism constitutes defamation of religion. It unfortunately breeds a culture of hatred, disharmony and discrimination,” Pakistan’s envoy, Masood Khan, said in a speech on behalf of the OIC, which links 57 Islamic nations.

Nice words, Khan, and I agree. But I wonder if the notorious use of blasphemy laws to persecute Pakistani Christians also “unfortunately breeds a culture of hatred, disharmony and discrimination”? Or all those jihadi madrassas? But back to Reuters:

…In a recent report, the U.N. special investigator on racism, Doudou Diene, cited examples including “Islamophobic violence” after the murder last November of Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh, and an “alarming number of expulsions of imams” in Europe.

This is probably from one of these two reports noted by UNPO:

the Commission will have before it the report of the High Commissioner on combating defamation of religions (E/CN.4/2005/15) and the progress report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diene, on the situation of Muslim and Arab peoples in various parts of the world in the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001 (E/CN.4/2005/19).

So, just what has the UNHCR resolved to do? Unfortunately, the resolution itself does not appear to be in public domain. It’s listed on the CHR website under “human rights documents” as number E/CN.4/2005/L.12, but clicking on the link irritatingly brings up a “NO AUTHORIZATION” page; the same happens if you want to read Diene’s report, as linked from here (brilliant public relations – talk about handing it on a plate to the wingers). The resolution is not featured on the OIC’s website, either.

However, some details can be gleaned from the UNHCR Newsroom, which relates a summary of the debate. Since there does not appear to be a permalink, I’ll quote the opening in full:

In a resolution (E/CN.4/2005/L.12) on combating defamation of religions, adopted by a roll-call vote of 31 in favour to 16 against, with five abstentions, the Commission expressed deep concern at negative stereotyping of religions and manifestations of intolerance and discrimination in matters of religion or belief still in evidence in some regions of the world; strongly deplored physical attacks and assaults on businesses, cultural centres and places of worship of all religions as well as targeting of religious symbols; noted with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions, and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities, in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001; expressed deep concern that Islam was frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism; and further expressed deep concern at programmes and agendas pursued by extremist organizations and groups aimed at the defamation of religions, in particular when supported by Governments. The Commission stressed the need to take resolute action to prohibit the dissemination of racist and xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion or its followers through political institutions and organizations, that constituted incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence; urged States to provide, within their respective legal and constitutional systems, adequate protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions; and urged States to ensure equal access to education for all without discrimination of any kind. The Commission also called on the international community to initiate a global dialogue to promote a culture of tolerance and peace based on respect for human rights and religious diversity and urged States, non-governmental organizations, religious bodies and the print and electronic media to support and promote such a dialogue. It also requested the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance to continue to present a report on the situation of Muslims and Arab peoples in various parts of the world and the discrimination faced by them.

The resolution was opposed by both the USA and the EU, among others. Leonard Leo of the USA stated that:

The United States supported the concept of the resolution and agreed with its intent. The resolution was, however, incomplete in that it failed to address attacks against all religions and must also include language pertaining to education and the use of media in the defamation of religion.

While Ian de Jong, for the EU, added that:

The aim of the European Union would have been to achieve a broader, more balanced text, based on the right to freedom of religion or belief and of expression.

De Jong, who is Dutch, seems to have been the only speaker calling for “freedom of expression” to be also included in the resolution. This is a shame – I’m as appalled as Diene about Islamophobic violence in Holland, but it is somewhat perverse to concentrate solely on that violence without acknowledging also the assault on the freedom to criticise religion that van Gogh’s murder represented (my own views on van Gogh’s film can be read here). And with the British government currently backing off from its own proposed new legislation concerning incitement to religious hatred, it’s worrying to see that the UNCHR seems unaware of the problematics.

Among those backing the resolution was China, which informed the forum that “The Government of China was against the defamation of any religion, including Islam”. This will perhaps evoke some hollow laughs from Tibetan Buddhists, Chinese Christians, and adherents of the “evil cult” of Falun Gong.

UPDATE: I found the resolution! I went to this site, where I had to request a password. Although the site where the report is available is described as “for OHCHR staff around the world”, I was given a password, no questions asked, a couple of hours later.

The document has some good points – with groups like LGF and JihadWatch inciting hatred against Muslims, it is quite reasonable that the resolution (at point 16) should make the specific request that

…the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance to continue to examine the situation of Muslims and Arab peoples in various parts of the world, the discrimination faced by them with regard to access to justice, political participation, respect of cultures, physical assaults and attacks against their places of worship, cultural centres, businesses and properties in the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001 and to report on his findings to the Commission at its sixty-second session, and to make recommendations to improve their situation.

On the other hand, passages like this are both vague and disturbing:

…Noting with deep concern the increasing trend in recent years of statements attacking religions, Islam and Muslims in particular, especially in human rights forums…

Saudi Arabia, which voted in favour of the resolution, must have loved that bit…But there is a particular context here: in 2004 the OIC opposed efforts led by Brazil to have the United Nations recognise the rights of homosexuals. Speaking before the UN, secretary-general Abdelouahed Belkeziz stated that:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference has amongst its consecrated traditions, the respect of the cultural specificities of every human community, and it feels in return that the cultural and faith-related specificities of the Islamic communities should also meet with due respect.

The full text of Belkeziz’s speech can be seen here.

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A possible new pin-up for the Christian Right: Ayn Rand. Writes Mike Adams in his latest Townhall column (via World O’Crap):

The modern socialists [“socialists” here meaning anyone to the left of Bush] also attack our Christian heritage with a zeal inspired by Marx’s mordent declaration that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” They know that capitalism can never fall as long as our nation retains that Christian heritage.

So what’s the answer? Get your kids to read We The Living, The Anthem, and The Fountainhead; Adams’ website has also featured Atlas Shrugged.

The big question, of course, is how the work of a militant atheist can be pressed to the cause of protecting the alleged “Christian heritage” of the USA. According to Rand herself:

Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism — the inviolate sanctity of man’s soul, and the salvation of one’s soul as one’s first concern and highest goal; this means — one’s ego and the integrity of one’s ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one’s soul — (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one’s soul?) — Jesus (or perhaps His interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which told them that in order to save one’s soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one’s soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires or needs of others, which means the subordination of one’s soul to the souls of others. This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved.

But that’s not really the point. Rand’s economics are capitalist, and apparently that’s more important than what you believe about Jesus (an impression confirmed when Jack Heller took a couple of Christian right “worldview tests” last year); and her belief in individualism currently appeals to the politics of resentment pushing so much of the Christian right agenda (plus it could be said that there’s not much of the “altruism” that Rand disliked on the Christian right anyway). Adams is not, though, the first Christian to get something out of Rand’s ideas: most work in this area has been undertaken by Fr Robert Sirico, an ex-Pentecostal turned Roman Catholic priest (profiled by Bill Berkowitz here). Sirico’s Acton Institute blends conservative Catholicism with Rand’s Objectivism, while rejecting her critique of Christianity. No doubt Adams picks and chooses in the same way, while simultaneously insisting that anyone who invokes Marx in any positive context must be a full-on Stalinist.

Quite a while back, Sirico caught the attention of paleolibertarian Lew Rockwell, who is no fan of Rand but who wrote approvingly of Sirico’s “Christian Libertarianism” in a 1990 essay since posted by the Freepers (link added):

The leviathan state’s systematic attack on the family goes beyond the promotion of unwed motherhood through welfare programs, and secular humanism through the government schools-the welfare state cuts to the heart of the family by arrogating to itself the authority of the father as protector and provider. In view of this, David Gordon of the Ludwig von Mises Institute points out that, contrary to the common impression that libertarians are free-thinkers and libertines, “Many libertarians … are libertarians precisely because they wish to protect traditional values and culture from the state.”

…”Many Christian conservatives have been put off by what seemed to be libertarianism’s irreligiousness, moral relativism, and belief in gay rights,”‘ says Joseph Sobran. “But the emergence, or rather re-emergence, of Christian libertarianism-which rejects all of this-makes it possible for us to join together to limit the giant state. We are all libertarians when it comes to the Federal Government. And we are all conservatives in our cultural and moral values.”

In the last year or so, this blog has noted how “Christian libertarianism” has been invoked to call for the end of public education, the establishment of a Christian theocracy in South Carolina, and for women to be denied the vote. Its rhetoric has even been used to call for the end of science, as this recent tirade from Gary North shows:

Darwinists are well aware of this truth: Their opinions regarding man’s origins are not shared by the vast majority of Americans. This fact bothers them, but not enough to surrender control over tax-funded education to the will of the people. It bothers them because they have lost the intellectual battle for the minds of men, despite their century-long monopoly over public education. The public still isn’t buying the Darwinists’ tuition-subsidized product.

Rockwell hosts a regular column for North – Rockwell is the intellectual heir of libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises, and North shares Rockwell’s enthusiasm for the Austrian. But this is the same Gary North who believes in stoning as a fit punishment for those who fail to submit to the commands of the Old Testament. North’s “libertarian” argument about the unpopularity of “Darwinism” is demagogic and in bad faith: because a majority of Americans prefer not to accept evolutionary theory, there is some mileage in whining about how unfair it all is; but if North had his way, biologists would be persecuted in the name of Christian “Truth”. The appeal of Ayn Rand to some on the Christian right probably has the same strategic value.

At the end of last year, the anti-war Rockwell (despite enthusiasm for the Iraq war expressed by so much of the Christian right, North is also anti-war, in paleocon stlye) argued that:

…If you follow hate-filled sites such as Free Republic, you know that the populist right in this country has been advocating nuclear holocaust and mass bloodshed for more than a year now. The militarism and nationalism dwarfs anything I saw at any point during the Cold War. It celebrates the shedding of blood, and exhibits a maniacal love of the state. The new ideology of the red-state bourgeoisie seems to actually believe that the US is God marching on earth – not just godlike, but really serving as a proxy for God himself.

Quite right: but this would ring truer if one did not suspect that Rockwell is some sort of useful idiot for a Christian Dominionism that talks libertarianism now, but lusts after theocracy.

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Back in March, WorldNetDaily‘s Aaron Klein wrote enthusiastically about the Israeli far right’s plan to storm the Temple Mount with 10,000 supporters. Klein conducted sympathetic interviews with David Ha’ivri, one of the main organisers, without bothering to tell his readership of starry-eyed Christian Zionists that Ha’ivri is a virulently racist fanatic who detests Israeli democracy and is reviled by most people in his own country. While Klein was looking forward to the Temple Mount being “reclaimed” from the Muslims who so unfairly have control of the site, I wrote:

Let’s just hope Ha’ivri is no more than a self-aggrandising fool who has duped a stupid journalist about how much support he has. Klein and WND’s editor Joseph Farah are playing with fire: Klein has encouraged Ha’ivri and his followers in their delusions, and given them a massive free advert; WND readers have been encouraged to identify Israel with a bunch of religious fanatics rather than to understand the complexities of Israeli society.

So, today’s D-Day. And what do we find? Over to Klein:

As of noon, only a few hundred protestors amassed near the Temple Mount, a trickle of the 10,000 Revava had hoped for.

A “few hundred”? Not according to the BBC:

In the event, only a few dozen Jewish ultranationalists tried to get to the area, police said.

Haaretz concurs with the smaller estimate.

But I shouldn’t be too smug: Ha’ivri never realistically expected to take the Temple Mount. All he really wanted to do was to stir up some hatred and unrest in the Occupied Territories and elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world, and with large numbers of Palestinians now riled up he appears to have succeeded. And all along he’s had two partners in this ignoble plot: Aaron Klein and Joseph Farah.

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A double-whammy of prophetic losers today. We’ve just had Hal Lindsey (of course); now, courtesy of the AFP,  it’s the turn of Gonzalo Echeverri Uruburu, a Colombian ex-investigating judge and author of a book on Nostradamus:

“The next pope elected will be subsequently murdered in central Italy. Then comes pope number 112, who will flee Rome because of an attack by Muslims,”

…According to Echeverri, the pope will base himself in Avignon, France and another pontiff will take control in Italy, splitting the Catholic church in two.

“There is a very clear prophecy that says the holy father will move to another place, even warning that the French pope will not be able to stay in Avignon due to the Muslim invasion and will flee again to Lyon, where he will be attacked, according to Nostradamus,” Mr Echeverri said.

The clownishness would be amusing, were not for the dangerous Islamophobia and deliberate profiteering from people’s fear and uncertainty. The report notes that Avignon was the home of the Popes in the Fourteenth Century, but makes no comment about the unlikelihood of medieval history repeating itself. Also irritating is the fact Echeverri has been shown up as an opportunistic hustler in the past. Here’s a report from July of last year:

Aseguran que Nostradamus predijo atentado en Atenas

El médico francés Miguel de Nostradamus habría vaticinado en sus escritos un atentado a los Juegos Olímpicos de Atenas que comienzan en agosto próximo, aseguró el experto colombiano en los textos del astrólogo, Gonzalo Echeverri.

In English, Echeverri was using Nostradamus to predict that there would be a massacre during the last Olympics. And as we all know, the only untoward event that actually occurred was an intervention from yet another end-of-the-world crackpot, a mentally disturbed Roman Catholic priest named Cornelius Horan.

Both “prophecies” appear in Echeverri’s book Nostradamus y la guerra Islam-occidente, which can be seen here (along with author pic), and with further details here.

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Hal Lindsey’s latest ramblings on WorldNetDaily:

As I studied the many Bible prophecies of the Last Days, I found a most unusual extra-biblical prophecy made by an Irish Catholic bishop in the 12th century.

Or, if Lindsey is truly honest: “As I was surfing Newsmax last week, I found an article I could rip off” –  Lindsey’s  “borrowings” are extensive, and unattributed.

According to his biographer, St. Malachy was visiting Rome in 1139 when he went into a trance and received a vision. Malachy wrote down this extraordinary vision in which he claims to have foreseen all of the popes from the death of Innocent II until the destruction of the church and the return of Christ. He named exactly 112 popes from that time until the end.

Lindsey’s lifted that virtually word-for-word from Newsmax, but both sources are inaccurate, as the on-line Catholic Encylopedia makes clear:

The silence of 400 years on the part of so many learned authors who had written about the popes, and the silence of St. Bernard especially, who wrote the “Life of St. Malachy”, is a strong argument against their authenticity…

So, that should be “not according to his biographer”. But, like Ed Wood, Lindsey is interested in the big picture, not the details:

St. Malachy wrote a few prophetically descriptive words in Latin about each one of the popes. He then gave the manuscript to Pope Innocent II and it was deposited in the Vatican Archives where it was forgotten for several centuries. Then in 1590, it was rediscovered and published.

Here Lindsey has decided to drop a qualification at the end of the Newsmax version:

Afterward he wrote a few words about each pope and gave the manuscript to Pope Innocent II, who is said to have deposited it in Vatican Archives, where it lay forgotten until it was discovered in 1590 and published. At the time, some questioned its authenticity and it has been the subject of debate ever since.

The document attributed to Malachy consists of obscure mystical titles used to describe the future Popes, although he does not give their actual names or dates. Many commentators note that the “prophecies” about supposed future Popes between 1139 and 1590 are rather more impressive than those given for Popes after the document’s publication; readers can judge for themselves on this site. Newsmax and Lindsey then relate standard interpretations by believers for the most recent Popes (The Catholic Encyclopedia also notes that Malachy supposedly prophesied England being reconverted to Roman Catholicism).

Lindsey does add a bit of his own stuff, and he brings in the Book of Daniel (his more usual topic). He then gives his own view about the last Pope:

…But it is the prophecy of the 112th and last pope that is most fascinating. St. Malachy predicts, “In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign “Petrus Romanus” (Peter the Roman), who will feed his flock amid many tribulations; after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people.”

…Now one last and extremely important detail. The “Prince who is to come”  [in the Book of Daniel] will be of the same people that destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70. They were Romans…John Paul II was a great and good man. But the coming popes will seize upon the popularity he created with the world. With the help of the media, it is easy to foresee how “Peter the Roman” will be able to mesmerize the world to follow his counterfeit of Christ.

But what the hell is he on about? According to the document (and according to some sites I ploughed through, this bit was added in 1820 anyway), Petrus Romanus will “feed his flock”; but at the same time, he’s going to be the “false Prophet” who acts as the sidekick to the Anti-Christ. How does that work?

The bigger question, though, is why Lindsey, a fundamentalist Protestant, is suddenly raving over medieval Roman Catholic prophecy. Surely Mel Gibson hasn’t been that effective? The reason, of course, is that Lindsey is opportunistic. When Immanuel Velikovsky was popular, he used some of his ideas; and in the 1990s he jumped on the Y2K bandwagon. He also promoted the cause of Mike Warnke, a pathological liar whose stories about Satanism helped to create the Satanic panic of the 1980s; Lindsey denounced the Christian journalists who uncovered Warnke’s falsehoods on the grounds that his tales had led to conversions (see this book). But should we really expect anything more from a man willing to lionise the terrorists of the Israeli far-right?

(Newsmax link from Conwebwatch)

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