Bartholomew's Notes

The Revealer, drawing on Sojourners and Chuck Currie, brings to my attention this opportunity at FedBizOpps (Federal Business Opportunities). Alas, we’ve missed the deadline:

This is a notice of intent to issue a sole-source purchase order to International Bible Society, 1820 Jetstream Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80921 for custom-printed Bibles. The Government intends to solicit and negotiate with only one source under authority of FAR 6.302-1(a)(2)(ii). Responses to this notice will be used to determine whether bona fide competition exists. Responses must be in writing, including technical and pricing information. The items being purchased are 10,000 New International Version (NIV) Bibles with a custom-designed cover. The Bibles include Army-designed color photographs and text inserts. The Bibles are being purchased as a follow on for compatibility with previously-purchased Bibles. All responses must be received by 4:00 pm EST on 30 November 2004.

Competitors, though, are likely to have had an uphill job: according to the Christian Post, writing last year, the IBS has supplied the US army since the War of 1812. Camouflage covers came in during the 1980s, although there is no information about any text inserts. The IBS also has a military representative, Rev Chuck Adams. However, the IBS is a venerable and respected institution, so I would agree with the Sojourners commentator that:

It’s hopefully safe to assume that though the Bibles are new, they will not be “improved.”

(Pic via a commentator on Free Republic)

UPDATE (22 March 2005): The Greater Birmingham Progressive Media Center reports that the army has now cancelled the order rather than answer a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

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Jizo shrine, with Koala:

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Commentator “ulyankee” brings to my attention (cheers!) a column by Tim Chavez in The Tennessean. Chavez is discussing evangelicals, and he exhorts us: “Don’t Buy Stereotypes”:

After President Bush’s re-election, lots of pundits and self-acclaimed experts have been talking about evangelical Christians — who went to the polls in record numbers — like a blended species of The Beverly Hillbillies and Jim Jones of Guyana cultist infamy.

Chavez, like David Brooks in several much-discussed columns for the New York Times, wants us to understand that evangelicalism is more complex (and less weird and scary) than that. However, while David Brooks recently introduced non-evangelical Americans to the British evangelical intellectual John Stott, Chavez presents us with Rice Broocks, who in fact is a neo-Pentecostal revivalist. Of course, here Chavez is just following recent popular usage of the term “evangelical”: although I would say that the evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic traditions should be distinguished (Stott eventually rejected the Charismatic movement at his church, All Souls), there is clearly a significant (and increasing) overlap. And using “evangelical” to cover conservative Protestants as a whole is at least an improvement on “fundamentalist” or “religious right” (which I would only use for specific individuals or groups).

Pentecostalism, like evangelicalism, can boast some intelligent and moderate leading figures. Even the Charismatic-run news service ASSIST, which is terminally credulous when it comes to miracle healings and such, manages a generally spontaneous and thoughtful approach to its reporting of world news. But why has Chavez chosen Rice Broocks as his exhibit A, a man linked with the controversial Maranatha Campus Ministries?

Describing a dinner hosted by Broocks, Chavez is impressed by the diversity he finds there:

the evangelical Christians on hand last Saturday night were of practically every race and ethnicity. One minister and his wife were originally from Singapore…Yet here it was in one home. And in these evangelical ranks were lawyers, ministers, a Texas Supreme Court justice, a former NFL player, authors, lobbyists, real estate executives, three Tennessee elected officials, local judges and so many others more educated than me — a puny pundit.

But what really surprises him is this:

Then, among attendees and guests of honor, were people of the Jewish faith, who felt free in remarks to several hundred Tennesseans on hand to talk of the connection between faith and politics…This budding relationship between Jews and evangelical Christians is more natural than we’ve been led to believe.

What a discovery, and only a mere 26 years after Yona Malachy published American Fundamentalism and Israel and 18 years after Grace Halsell’s Prophecy and Politics: The Secret Alliance Between Israel and the U.S. Christian Right (to give just two examples, and leaving aside the many best-selling books published by Christian Zionists themselves over the last thirty years, as well as several decades of more thoughtful Jewish-Christian dialogue based on other foundations). Apparently the fact that his “evangelicals” were hosting some Jews and saying nice things about Israel proves the moderation of conservative Christianity.

But what Chavez completely misses is the “why”. The “people of the Jewish faith” dining with Broocks and Chavez actually represent the Israeli far right: MK Yuri Shtern is a former settler leader, and his National Union party advocates “voluntary transfer” of Palestinians from their homes in the name of “greater Israel” (1). Chavez says to us “Don’t Buy Stereotypes”, while the only reason Shtern met with Broocks’s Christian guests is because he wants to encourage stereotyping: the stereotype of the Jew as basically being God’s puppet, and the stereotype of the Arab as Muslim fanatic, the “wild man” descended from Ishmael (plus, in Chavez’s report, the stereotype of the godless European Arab-lover). These stereotypes are central to Christian Zionism, a movement that now appears to be gaining appeal beyond its premillennialist roots.

Broocks has been considered on this blog before. He is the President and co-founder of Morning Star International, a neo-Pentecostal denomination. Morning Star in turn oversees His People Ministries, a South African grouping that has churches in several other countries, including some that bear other names. Doug Giles’s Clash Church used to be called His People Miami, and it is not clear what links he maintains with this group or with Morning Star. Giles’s Clash Church site (under “pastor”) is cagey, saying only that he is overseen by unnamed “local, national and international leaders within the greater body of Christ”; he also still “speaks regularly” in South Africa, according to his Clash Radio site.

Recently, I came across a titbit about His People and Kenneth Meshoe’s African Christian Democratic Party (which has seven South African MPs and seventy councillors, and is also robustly Christian Zionist):

The ACDP is funded mainly by the Louis Group of Companies, who also publishes the ‘charismatic Christian’ magazine Today. To further complicate the picture, the Cape Town headquarters of the ‘His People’ movement, consisting of ‘charismatic’ extremists, is based in the buildings of the Louis Group in Century City. It can thus be presented as an interlocking organisation, with the ACDP as the political front, Today magazine as the propaganda mouthpiece, ‘His People’ as the religious front, and the Louis Group always in the background as financiers.

The site where this came from is run by South African Randian-libertarians, who are not my cup of tea, and no footnotes are included, so I decided to check this out for myself. Sure enough, the Louis Group describes itself as a Christian company, and lists under its “Social Responsibilities”:

NGO affiliations: The Ark, ACDP, Jabez Community Project, Transformation Africa ; His People Christian Church

Further, in an undated profile, CEO Dr Alan Louis identified his minister as Paul Daniel, who used to endorse Giles’s products until Daniel resigned from His People leadership after admitting adultery. How far these connections support the contention that the Louis Group “mainly finances” His People and the ACDP, or that the two must therefore be “interlocking” is impossible to judge, but these links are worth keeping an eye on.

*************

(1) According to IsraelVotes, the National Union does say that “Arabs choosing to remain in [the West Bank and Gaza] would become full citizens of Israel”, but comments by former party leader Rehavam Zeevi (who was murdered in 2001) suggest that the “voluntary” nature of the transfer should not be taken too literally. At any rate, any Palestinians remaining would become “full citizens” of a Jewish state, not a bi-national one.

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Free Republic (hold your nose) links to a number of obits for Reed Irvine, co-founder of Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia. According to Wilson “Nukem” Lucom in Newsmax:

Over 30 years ago, Reed and I were two letter writers to the New York Times and other major newspapers. Each week Reed and I, along with several sincere Washington conservatives, would meet for lunch. We would discuss the issues of the day and how biased the media were.

Remember, this was during the height of the Cold War. War was still raging in Vietnam, and our brave soldiers were dying in the rice paddies as the New York Times helped the communists…One day I suggested to Reed we start a non-profit organization that criticized the major media when it made mistakes…I told Reed that if he would devote the time to make it work, I would donate the seed money.

Thus was born AIM, which, according to the NY Times:

paved the way for the tide of conservative talk shows, Web sites and news programming that would follow decades later.

The Times adds:

And while AIM occasionally lived up to its name, it also spent much of its time pursuing conspiracy theories.

In recent years, for example, Mr. Irvine turned his attention to such speculative topics as whether the death in 1993 of Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel in the Clinton administration, was really a suicide. He also challenged the government’s explanation of the crash in 1996 of T.W.A. Flight 800, alleging that it had been caused by a rocket.

The Times also says that

In 1985, Mr. Irvine started Accuracy in Academia, which was presented as an effort to challenge the teachings of college and university professors in the same way as AIM had done with the media. In this case, an indignant response was widespread, with a number of prominent conservatives joining liberals in the defense of academic freedom. A.I.A., as it was called, was never able to achieve the sort of influence that AIM had demonstrated.

AIA produces a newsletter, Campus Report, which for some years was edited by Lucom. More recently, AIA was headed by Dan Flynn, an anti-war conservative and friend of Mike Adams, and the current AIA website includes a prominent endorsement from anti-Kinsey crank Judith Reisman.

Irvine’s financier (also known as Chuck Lucom) has been an occasional subject for Pete M at The Dark Window. Lucom is a great humbug: while anyone who has any misgivings about US policy in the Middle East must be a terrorist sympathiser, Lucom himself is a cheerleader for General Pinochet, whose regime was responsible for a car bomb in Washington DC in 1976 that killed two. There is also a weird discrepancy on his Newsmax bio. On his bio page we read:

For over 25 years he was Chairman of Concerned Voters, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative organization. During the same period he also served as President of the United States Anti-Communist Congress in Washington, D.C.

But at the foot of most of his articles it says:

Wilson C. Lucom is a former president of the World Anti-Communist League

WACL is, of course, better-known and, like Lucom, has serious links with South American dictators, but despite numerous studies of WACL online there is little mention of Lucom. It seems likely, therefore, that the latter profile is an error. Also, files at the Library of Congress link the rather more obscure United States Anti-Communist Congress with Herbert A Philbrick (covert anti-communist member of the CPUSA), and Philbrick with Lucom.

One aspect of AIM that the reviewers all miss is a rather dodgy connection brought to my attention by blogs Ethically (Abhorrent) and Take Back Our Campus. Using Wayback to look at the AIM website for the end of 2001 we find:

AIM Events
..In Defense of Western Man
American Renaissance Conference
February 22 – 24, 2002, Herndon, Virginia
Speakers include Jared Taylor, Sam Francis, Glenn Spencer, Dr. Phillipe Ruston of the U. of Western Ontario, Prof. Michael Levin of CUNY, Nick Griffin of the British National Party, and many others.  Click here for more info…

American Renaissance is a racialist organisation, and clicking on the link takes us to an archived American Renaissance site which reveals the following, among much else:

In all parts of the world, whites are afraid to speak out in their own interests. The costs of “diversity,” racial differences in IQ, the threat of non-white immigration—politicians and the media are afraid to discuss what these things mean for whites and their civilization.

We are different…Speakers will include:

 J. Philippe Rushton — “In Search of the African IQ.” Prof. Rushton is the world’s leading theorist on the nature and significance of racial differences

…Nick Griffin — “Racial Friction in Britain and Europe.” Mr. Griffin is chairman of the British National Party. He is a graduate of Cambridge, and has been editor of several British nationalist magazines, including The Rune and Spearhead.

The profile for Griffin is too modest by half. A friend of David Duke, Griffin has the political savvy to appear anti-immigration rather than racist when appearing on the BBC, but he has a long history of anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial (he has attacked David Irving for not going far enough) and authorship of a booklet Who are the Mindbenders? on supposed Jewish control of the media. The BNP leadership is full of other charming characters, many of who have been convicted for violent racially-related crimes. StoptheBNP has many more details. AIM appears to have dropped its endorsement for this event by Jan 2002 (the next archived page), although there is no explanation as to why.

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The Jerusalem Post reports on some non-US Christian Zionists at the Jerusalem Summit:

Israel is not getting out its political message to millions of Christian supporters around the world who have a skewed view of the conflict with the Palestinians, Christian leaders who are attending the Jerusalem Summit said Tuesday in a meeting with the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus.

Dr. Miles [sic – should be “Myles”] Munroe, the head of the Bahamas-based International Third World Leaders’ Association, said Israeli spokesmen should be better at exploiting Christian broadcasting stations to get their message to the hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide who are pro-Israel. He said Israel should also be sending emissaries to Christian conventions such as those his group holds. “Christians are not getting a correct perspective on Israel,” he said, explaining that they have to rely on “biased Western media.”

Does the “biased Western media” include Israeli human rights groups like B’TSelem and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions?  Munroe does not say, but his concerns were echoed by Kenneth Meshoe, president of South Africa’s African Christian Democratic Party, and Rijk van Dam, director of the EU lobby group the European Coalition for Israel.

As it happens, I saw Munroe in London a couple of years ago, but managed to escape the prosperity preacher with my wallet intact. Meshoe is a former associate of Reinhard Bonnke, the German faith healer who holds regular revivals across Africa, (Meshoe’s ACDP also appears to have some links with Doug Giles’s old “His People” denomination). Vam Dam is a former Dutch MEP with the ChristenUnie Party (click on the British flag for English) and his website links him with various Christian Zionist organisations such as the International Christian Embassy (which calls the EU “a colossal amoral and anti-Semitic stronghold”).

The Knesset Christian Allies Caucus is a cross-party attempt by Israeli politicians to liase more closely with Christian Zionists. According to ASSIST:

The Knesset Christian Allies’ Caucus is the outgrowth of an idea that had been brewing over recent years among Israeli lawmakers, particularly after broad segments of Christianity aligned to stop the construction of a provocative mosque next to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. But through MK Shtern’s efforts, the caucus was rushed into being in recent weeks after a number of Christian expatriates residing in Israel ran into difficulties renewing visas in the second half of 2003.

In return for helping the Christians, the MKs want the Christian Zionists to spread the pro-Israeli perspective among the churches, and to hand over some cash:

In one instance the co-chair of the newly formed caucus, MK Yair Peretz of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, who represents a segment of society that maintains little contact with Christians, made a sincere appeal for Christian assistance to help Israel meet the needs of its poorest communities during these tough times. Peretz suggested that due to the nation’s budget constraints, Christians could perhaps distribute Passover baskets to needy secular families this spring and school bag kits to underprivileged children at the start of classes next fall.

Maintaining all those settlements in the West Bank is quite expensive, you know. But what is the “Jerusalem Summit”? According to its website introduction:

On the cross-roads of history Jerusalem has produced new ideas which changed the world and advanced it towards the great ideals of Truth and Peace.

Now is the time of a world-wide crisis when the new ideas are especially needed for developing an alternative to the twin dangers of modernity: religious totalitarianism of the East, as represented by radical Islam, and moral relativism of the West, as represented by atheistic globalization.

New ideas, even the most efficient and needed, are accepted with great difficulties.

Jerusalem Summit strives to gather in the capital of Israel the best minds and souls from around the world to present the most innovative socio-political ideas, so that the combined wisdom of participants will propel the best of these ideas to the global status.

And who are these “best minds and souls”? Erm, a bunch of neo-cons and Christian fundamentalists (as if you were surprised). Reporting on its first session last year:

Among featured participants were many of today’s most gifted policymakers – Richard Perle, Senator Sam Brownback, Congressman Eliot Engel, Prof. Daniel Pipes, Amb. Alan Keyes, Cal Thomas, Benjamin Netanyahu and Uzi Landau.

Meanwhile, the banner across the top of the site gives prominence to Mike Evans, the absurd racist who believes (among much else) a) that God did want Arabs to exist in the first place – they were only created because Abraham disobeyed God’s will and b) that God killed Franklin Roosevelt because Roosevelt made some friendly overtures to the Saudis after World War Two.

This year’s conference, which finished just two days ago, was on the subject of a “humanitarian approach” to the “Palestinian Problem” (their choice of wording): “humanitarian” being a euphemism for racist, extreme-right, self-righteous, pro-Likud, and historically dishonest:

Palestinian conduct over the last six decades proves they neither genuinely desire nor genuinely deserve statehood.

…the entire Palestinian narrative must be discredited and de-legitimized as a historical hoax, totally at odds with historical facts.

How that discrediting is to be achieved, since the narrative has been confirmed even by a number of Israeli scholars such as Ilan Pappé and Benny Morris (the latter of whom asserts that even so, Israel should have expelled all the Palestinians in 1948), is not described, but one suspects shouts of “anti-Semitism” will do the trick, especially with Pipes running his politically-powerful “Campus Watch”.

So should Palestinians be given equal citizenship with Israelis instead then? No, of course not: the “humanitarians” prefer an offer that can’t be refused:

Generous financial compensation to Palestinians who relocate and resettle elsewhere in the Arab or Muslim world.

For the individual Palestinian, the alternative to rejecting the offer of the generous relocation and the chance of a better life for him and his family would be either life under continued Israeli control or life under a Palestinian regime which has proven even more onerous and oppressive.

Since the Palestinian regime option would be unacceptable to the “humanitarians”, what Pipes, Netanyahu and the rest are really offering is ethnic cleansing or continued political disenfranchisement under Israeli military control.

However, another part of the site looks particularly odd from a conservative Christian viewpoint:

The Jerusalem Summit to be held on November 28, 2004, will launch the development of the Council of Civilizations, which is intended to evolve into a new model for unifying the international community and providing it with an ethical compass.

Admission to the Council of Civilizations is subject to recognizing the following realities:

1. The spiritual laws that serve as common basis to all religions must also serve as basis for taking decisions in all the human activities. Most important of these laws are:

Consciousness defines Being

Human life is sacred

People have equal rights and freedoms

Religions are diverse and all equally lead to God

Jerusalem has always served as a source for the universal concern for all the nations on earth. The Bible indictates that in addition to Israel, there are seventy ancient nations which are the roots of the diverse national groups and cultures which exist today and which are based on the number of descendants of Noah which are listed in the Book of Genesis, after the story of the great flood. Seventy names are recorded, and at the end of the section it states, “These are the families of Noah’s descendants, and from these nations were separated on on the earth after the flood” (Genesis 10:2). The Bible commands the people of Israel to bring seventy offerings on behalf of the seventy nations to the Temple on the Festival of Tabernacles to pray to the Almighty for continued life, sustenance and blessings for the seventy nations. Representatives of the seventy nations were present in Jerusalem at the time at the presentation of these offerings. The seventy nations are the main players in the modern world. Today they are categorized as the major superpowers that represent separate civilizations. Other individual civilizations are represented by the clusters of countries, or regional groups. The major threat to the world peace comes from the clashes of these civilizations.

Of course, the purpose of this statement is merely to cloak the Summit’s extremism with a bit of moderate language. But surely, the claim that “Religions are diverse and all equally lead to God” should have every conservative Christian hopping: and for those who subscribe to the Tim LaHaye fantasy of the anti-Christ setting up shop in Jerusalem and announcing world peace I would have thought the whole agenda would be setting off alarm bells. But perhaps, as I suggested before, with Christian fundamentalists finally tasting real power, the last thing they want is to be raptured. And what’s one sentence about religious universalism when stacked against the chance to share in the space-cadet glow of Israeli militant expansionism?

UPDATE: WorldNetDaily has an unsurprisingly gushing report on the summit from David Dolan.

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The forces of conservatism are showing their independent minds regarding the new movie Kinsey, and it’s ad hominem ad nauseum. The essence could be distilled thus:

There’s a new film about Alfred Kinsey out. I haven’t seen it, but Judith Reisman tells me that he was worse than Hitler. He made all his stuff up, and the stuff he didn’t make up was acquired unethically. His data was also flawed, because he was a bad person, although the idea of citing other studies on sexuality or undertaking new research never occurred to Reisman and so is of no interest to me. Because of Kinsey’s work, gay people don’t feel ashamed and dirty, and people started masturbating. This movie is propaganda from godless Hollywood meant to corrupt our youth – we should boycott Fox.

Well, OK, not the last four words. But that’s the herd thinking from the wingnutily correct. We’ve already covered Ted Baehr, who kicked off on the subject:

Recently, the New York Times had an article admitting that Alfred Kinsey made a lot of mistakes in his research on human sexuality, but the article commended Kinsey for showing that all men masturbate and the majority of people are bisexual.

…Well, a whole generation has bought the Kinsey lie, including the author of the New York Times article. And, the fact that just one person does not do this would mean that his blanket statement that “everyone does it” is a self-destructive lie…a Jewish grandmother and researcher, Dr. Reisman, has shown that the addictions that Kinsey promoted are just a bunch of lies that no one has to fall prey to in their own life.

Concerned Women for America also chimes in:

According to early reports, the movie, directed by homosexual activist Bill Condon, glosses over the stunning fact that much of Kinsey’s work has been revealed as fraud, and that he aided and abetted the molestation of hundreds of children in order to obtain data on “child sexuality.”

Kinsey’s work has been instrumental in advancing acceptance of pornography, homosexuality, abortion, and condom-based sex education, and his disciples even today are promoting a view of children as “sexual beings.” Their ultimate goal: to normalize pedophilia, or “adult-child sex.”

…We owe a great debt to Dr. Judith Reisman, who has labored for three decades to expose the truth about Alfred Kinsey and the ongoing effort by Kinsey-connected groups to use bad science to assault the moral order of marriage and family.

“According to early reports”, eh? Glad CWA didn’t soil itself by actually watching the movie. CWA also announces its support for Restoring Social Virtue and Purity to America (RSVP), an anti-Kinsey lobby group run by Eunice Ray, a former member of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service.

The baton is then passed to David Kupelian, vice-president of WorldNetDaily, in a lengthy piece. Kupelian takes us back to the halcyon days of the 1950s, when:

Divorce was rare, abortion and homosexuality were “in the closet” and out of view of polite society. It was the age of “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Father knows best” and “Leave it to Beaver.” Classics like “Ben-Hur” and “High Noon” were box-office favorites, and C.S. Lewis was publishing his beloved adventure book series, “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

“Ben-Hur”? The film with that homoerotic javelin scene scripted by Gore Vidal? But Kinsey ruined that innocent era. Moreover, Reisman has shown that Kinsey encouraged paedophiles to abuse children and

Reisman is a world-renowned expert and scholar on this subject, has been a consultant to three U.S. Department of Justice administrations, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, and is sought worldwide to lecture, testify and counsel regarding fraudulent sex science. She is speaking the awful truth here.

…Like the socialists, progressives, Darwinists, atheists, humanists and assorted other God-deniers that paved the way for him, Kinsey regarded man as an animal – and only an animal…Read what “The Satanic Bible” says about man and sex, and note how familiar and mainstream it sounds.

Yes, if people are having sex it’s because of the Darwin-Marx-Kinsey-LaVey axis.

Next up, Illinois Leader media critic Arlen Williams (thanks to Jesus’ General for the link):

A movie is now being shown that promotes one of the most evil and destructive figures in the 20th Century. The setting: not Berlin, nor Moscow, nor Peking . . . but Bloomington, Indiana.

The real story on Kinsey may be found in numerous places. I am drawing from the 11/12 WorldNetDaily column, “Selling sex in the U.S.A.” by editor David Kupelian and his citation of the findings of Dr. Reisman. I suggest the very informative albeit tortuous read…Celebrate the movie promoting America’s own 20th Century mega-villian!

Yes, Williams has read Kupelian writing about Reisman, so can authoritatively state that Kinsey was a wicked man responsible for all that is wrong with modern society. Who says a “media critic” needs to actually watch some media anyway?

Williams’s deep insights are also echoed by one-time Pulitzer runner-up Ross Mackenzie at Townhall:

First, this year, it was Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” followed by Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Comes now the year’s third culturally divisive flick, “Kinsey” – about sexologist Albert Kinsey, one of the early popularizers of “If it feels good, do it!” Notes Judith Reisman, author of the 1990 book “Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People”: The consequences of the dubious Kinsey’s “sexual adventurism include AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, child sexual abuse, incest, and pornography.” The movie may make him out to be just another guy with – you know – an excess of passion.

Jane Jimenez at Agape Press adds:

…Kinsey’s authority on sexual behavior went virtually unchallenged for 30 years. Then on July 23, 1981, at the Fifth World Congress of Sexology in Jerusalem, a diminutive American psychologist stepped to the podium to present her research findings to a standing-room only session.

…Dr. Judith Reisman laid out her charges methodically, presenting slides of Tables 30-34 [in Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male] and analyzing the specific entries which calculated the rates and timed the speeds of orgasms in at least 317 infants and children. How, she challenged the audience, did rape and molestation of children ever make the transition from criminal activity to research? And she rested her case.

Apparently nobody had ever noticed these tables before, hidden in the middle of a bestseller for decades. She concludes:

[Paul Gebhard, Kinsey’s coauthor] gives a thumbs-up to Kinsey — but consider who is behind the thumb. Endorsing fame and adulation for one of the greatest child abusers of the modern world is child’s play for a man unmoved by the “screaming,” “weeping,” and “convulsing” of innocent children.

Considering seeing Kinsey? Don’t.

Meanwhile, Sue Ellin Browder holds up the Catholic end. Browder actually does a better job than the other conservatives, ignoring Reisman in favour of serious academic critics and pointing out serious flaws with Kinsey’s work that I would agree with. However, like the others she is not interested in doing better research, and turns authoritarian demagogue:

Kinsey’s pseudoscience arguably did the most damage through our court systems. That’s where attorneys used the researcher’s “facts” to repeal or weaken laws against abortion, pornography, obscenity, divorce, adultery, and sodomy…The legal fallout from Kinsey’s work continues. The US Supreme Court’s historic decision last year striking down sodomy laws was the offshoot of a long string of court cases won largely on the basis of Kinsey’s research. And 50 years of precedents set by Kinsey’s “false 10 percent” are now being used in states like Massachusetts to redefine marriage.

The main problem with all of the above is not that Kinsey’s work or the movie should not be criticised, but the gaping black hole of anti-intellectualism. As with conservative support for Creationism, the strategy is not really to engage with a complex field of study, but to concentrate attacks on a long-dead figure seen as the founder of an area of research. It is hoped that these attacks will conceal the fact that the attackers actually have no useful new data on the subject in hand worthy of serious consideration. Reisman is a crank whose lawyer deserted her when she tried to sue to Kinsey Institute for defamation and whose dodgy methods have been considered by Miss Poppy Dixon; the uncritical reliance on her work by the various pundits above (in most cases not even used directly!) except Browder exposes this anti-intellectualism ever more clearly (I drew on Miss Poppy’s article on the subject here).

Reisman and her supporters are know-nothings. Reisman is quoted by Daniel Radosh in The New Yorker as saying

One doesn’t measure American sexual habits…That’s not a science.

This attitude can also be seen in a Guardian report on the controversy over the film, in a quote from Family Research Council “director of culture studies” Peter Spriggs:

We know the formula for sexual health, which is sex within a monogamous, lifelong relationship… Studying permutations of it is an effort like Kinsey’s to change the sexual mores of society, so that what most people consider deviant behaviours look more normal.

Kinsey is not really hated because his research was flawed or biased, or because he used a paedophile to get information (at a time when any child who dared to allege sexual abuse by a respected adult would most likely have been dismissed as a liar), but simply because by asking questions he made it a bit more difficult for people to use ignorance as a tool of control.

UPDATE: Yet more of the same from Don Feder in FrontPage.

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At the Christon Cafe [sic], Osaka:

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Significant events in West Africa have a habit of being overshadowed by the Middle East: in 1967, the Six Day War kicked off days after Biafra declared independence from Nigeria; in 1990, the fall of the dictator Samuel Doe of Liberia and subsequent civil war was overshadowed by the invasion of Kuwait. Now, with battles in Falluja and Mosul underway, dramatic events in the Ivory Coast are going under-reported. But don’t worry; Pat Robertson’s got his eye on the ball:

CBN.com – (CBN News) – While the eyes of the world are on Iraq, a political and religious crisis is playing out in the African nation of Ivory Coast. Dozens of Western nations are scrambling to rescue their citizens in what is described as the largest evacuation in Africa in recent times. And at the heart of the conflict are the French, a group of Muslim rebel soldiers and a Christian president.

So who are the good guys?

[President] Gbagbo and his wife are born-again Christians, and have actively promoted national reconciliation efforts between Christians and Muslims throughout the country.

Gbagbo said, “I know that we are in a difficult situation right now, but I know that with the help of God and the prayers of people around the world, we shall overcome this crisis.”

And that’s all we need to know about Gbagbo. And since Pat has previously shown his discerning Christian judgement by supporting Rios Montt, Sese Seko Mubutu and Charles Taylor, I’m sure alarm bells shouldn’t start going off at all. The Revealer rounds up a few other American Christian statements on the conflict:

World Evangelical Alliance frames the fight as a “decisive hour” in a battle between Christians and “demonic” Islamists. Mega-site Crosswalk focussed only on Christian victims of violence. And even Christianity Today, home to fine and respectable journalism, spun the story, at its beginning at least, as one primarily of anti-Christian persecution, with no mention that the government in power is “Christian,” at least to the extent that such a claim helps it mobilize mobs to attack Muslims.

According to Elizabeth Kendal of the WEA Religious Liberty Commission:

Evidence abounds that the rebels have received training, funds and arms from Burkina Faso, Libya, al-Qaeda and other Islamist networks. The rebels’ agenda is not only political (a coup to install their choice of leader) but Islamist. They have threatened to ‘slaughter’ some Christian leaders and pastors.

…Ivory Coast has been a haven of peace, liberty, stability and prosperity in West Africa. Because it has full religious freedom it has been the base of much West African Christian mission. The integrity of the nation is now at stake. But the conflict has implications beyond Ivory Coast: if these rebels succeed in Ivory Coast then what is to prevent similar foreign and network sponsored Muslim rebels revolting in other ethnically and religiously mixed nations such as Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria. The rebels have blamed their lack of success so far on the prayers of Christians. Let’s have the same confidence in the power released through our prayers that they have! Let’s pray!

Kendal’s article incorporates previous statements she has made on the Ivory Coast over the past couple of years (including the rather over-egged “domino theory” that ignores differences between the countries of West Africa and the diversity of Muslim traditions), one of which was an article for ASSIST last year. In fairness, she does know a fair bit about the country:

Cote d’Ivoire’s problems stem from unmanaged immigration. While economic recession has led to tensions, the immigrants are not the cause of the present troubles. Neither is it the fact that the immigrants are predominantly Muslims. But for one political figure, status, ethnicity and religion could prove to be the answer to all his political problems.

This political figure, Dr. Alassane Ouattara, did not qualify to stand in presidential elections in 2000. This was not because he is Muslim – the Vice President is Muslim, the Prime minister is a northern Muslim, and there are many Muslim MPs. Dr. Ouattara’s problems were related his nationality. Among the many issues was the fact that Dr. Ouattara’s involvement in the International Monetary Fund and the Central Bank of West Africa were as a citizen of Burkina Faso – formerly Upper Volta. This did not rule him out of Cote d’Ivoire politics, but according to the Cote d’Ivoire constitution it disqualified him from the presidency.

Dr. Ouattara, however, knows how to play politics 21st Century style. An estimated 50% of the population of Cote d’Ivoire are immigrants from the neighbouring Islamic countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Niger and Mauritania. They share not only the same religion as the Muslims of Cote d’Ivoire, but also the same cultural and historical ties. By playing race and religion cards for personal political gain, Dr. Ouattara has managed to unite them behind him. Now all that is needed are the relevant constitutional and law changes that will enable Dr. Ouattara to stand as a presidential candidate, and allow the new citizens (nationalised immigrants) to vote him into power. These have been the demands of the rebels ever since their coup failed on 19 September 2002.

Kendal does, however, gloss over very real problems with Gbagbo that are reported by the Washington Post‘s old West Africa hand Douglas Farah (Farah is the author of Blood from Stones, about al-Qaeda’s financing from the West African diamond trade. Farah’s claims were rejected by the 9/11 Commission)

In late November 2000, the newly elected Gbagbo met privately with the ambassadors of France, the United States and Britain. With his country teetering on the edge of civil war, Gbagbo agreed to allow the main opposition party, excluded from the presidential contest and made up mostly of Muslims from the north, to participate in scheduled parliamentary elections.

Gbagbo had narrowly defeated a despised military officer in violence-marred elections in which less than 30 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots. His openly anti-Muslim campaign rhetoric and promises to purge Ivory Coast of foreigners were largely lost in the chaos of the moment.

Gbagbo promised to announce the agreement in a televised address to the nation. But a cabinet minister appeared instead to announce that the opposition was banned and also to challenge the right of its members to citizenship. It was the first step in Gbagbo’s effort to undo four decades of policies that had successfully encouraged racial and religious harmony.

… I was in Abidjan the next day when angry Muslims took to the streets to protest, only to be met by armed, government-sponsored mobs that rampaged through Muslim sectors of the city. They systematically attacked immigrants from Burkina Faso, Mali and other impoverished countries who had been invited into Ivory Coast as laborers. Human Rights Watch documented the atrocities of Gbagbo’s forces, including massacres of unarmed youths buried in common graves, rape, torture and the razing of mosques.

As for the rebels, the American Christian “Islamist” characterisation is somewhat inaccurate:

The rebels who control the northern half of the country are not the solution. They are an unsavory mix of disgruntled Ivorian officers, remnants of Charles Taylor’s thuggish security forces and other guns-for-hire from around the region. Criminal networks trafficking in weapons and diamonds span the border area of Ivory Coast, Liberia and Guinea, creating what one senior Pentagon official called a “fluid mass of anarchy.” But the rebels gained a foothold because of Gbagbo’s single-minded determination to split his country along ethnic and religious lines while entrenching himself in power.

The Revealer also notes that

Gbago has framed the conflict as a holy war, with Ivory Coast “native” Protestants on one side, and foreign Muslims and godless French Catholics on the other. One evangelical preacher took to Ivory Coast state radio to declare that French President Chirac is “inhabited by the spirit of Satan”, after French peacekeepers destroyed the Ukrainian gunships Gbago’s forces had used to terrorize Muslim civilians and attack the peacekeepers, as well as American aid workers.

However, Protestants are just part of the Christian equation. A few days ago the BBC reported that

Cardinal Bernard Agre said last week he had seen young girls decapitated by the French army – a charge President Gbagbo said he believed to be true.

…French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said the “outrageousness” of the claims “strips them of any credibility”.

Agre was speaking in Rome, where he was attending a long-arranged meeting of the Pontifical Council for the Family (and during which he spoke privately with the Pope). Agre appears to be a moderate and intelligent figure, and his report of French atrocities deserves to be investigated as vigorously as the crimes of US soldiers in Abu Ghraib (although, to be precise, Agre did not say he saw girls being decapitated. What he said on Vatican Radio [reported by the AFP] was that “I have just come from the hospitals. It’s unbearable, these young people decapitated by the French army.”). However, unlike Kendal, Agre is willing also to denounce corruption in Gbagbo’s government and he appears to reject the “good Christian vs evil Islamist” caricature. According to the Catholic World News:

Cardinal Agre denied that there is great tension between the Muslims of Ivory Coast, who constitute about 38 percent of the population, and the Christians who make up 28 percent. In fact, he suggested that the perception of such a conflict is caused by “prejudices that are unfortunately inflamed by the French press.” While the Muslim population is located primarily in the north of the country, and the Christians in the south, there is no major geographical divide, he said. “We are all united in wanting peace to return to the country,” the cardinal said.

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As Doug Giles’s hunting buddy Dr Mike Adams furthers his vendetta against North Carolina state senate member Julia Boseman (a person guilty of the offences of being Democratic and lesbian –  see below), it’s time to review his career.

Adams comes from Mississippi, and has been a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina since the early 1990s. According to his own account, he converted from being a “radical” Democrat and atheist in 1996 after visiting a squalid prison in Ecuador and talking to someone on death row in the USA:

A few days later, I snuck into Barnes and Noble at about 10:45 p.m., just before closing time. I didn’t want anyone to see me when I went to the counter to purchase a copy of the King James Bible. I had given my old Bible to my next-door neighbor in college. That was eight years earlier.

It took me about eight months to read the King James Version. It took an additional two years to read four more translations of the Bible (the NRSV, GNT, NIV, and NASB).  By then, I had found satisfactory answers to all of the questions that led me to atheism in the first place.

…I’m just glad that I had the chance to renounce the things I had said about Christians and Christianity during my years as a radical graduate student and later as a professor. I don’t think I would have said any of those things or held any of those views if I had just read the right things earlier. I should have read the Bible, C.S. Lewis, and Chuck Colson before I went to college to read Sigmund Freud and B.F. Skinner.

This conversion narrative is actually quite commonplace: the most pious Christian becomes the bitterest atheist, or vice versa, and the most dogmatic Marxist becomes the most strident neo-con. Of course, although Adams gives us the triggers for his conversion, we are left to guess at the underlying psychological aspects: however, his post-conversion fear and loathing of feminists and his assertions of masculinity are suggestive. In a January 2005 article, Adams tells us that he announced his atheism publicly in 1992, which would be four years after getting rid of his Bible. He had an unhappy break with his atheist girlfriend the very next day, although this was “my first step on the road to freedom”.

Aside from his links to Doug Giles, nothing much can be gleaned about his actual church or personal religious mentors, although he describes himself as a “fundamentalist”. He is particularly supportive of Creationism, asserting (“arguing” would be too generous a description) that macro-evolutionary theory is the “new religion of pseudo scientists who think that they are atheists” (Pharyngula responded to Adams’s pretensions in more detail than he deserved).

Adams’s date with destiny came in the weeks following 9/11. A UNC student named Rosa Fuller sent out an email criticising US policy in the Middle East in fairly strident and breathless language, to which Adams sent a dismissive and critical response (this is all covered in his book, apparently). Some other recipients replied to Fuller’s email threatening violence, and these senders were investigated by the authorities. However, Fuller also alleged that Adams had defamed her, inciting these threats, and an investigation followed. At first I thought this claim against Adams was rather weak, but, as SZ at World O’Crap has dug up, one of the threat senders (“People like you deserve to be dragged down the street by your hair..I hope you will have the good sense to keep you[r] liberal moth shut at a time like this. No one needs your shit.”) was a UNC student named Krysten Scott, who married Adams eighteen months later.

Fuller’s parents joined the controversy (her mother also teaches at UNC), and her father Dennis has a website on the subject. Alas, Dennis Fuller’s strong suit is not brevity, and he rambles on at length, bringing in obscure quotes from Hegel at more than one point. However, he makes one point worth consideration (although I haven’t been able to verify his quotes from the Washington Times):

On October 1, the Washington Times…reported that Dr. Adams had been charged with “harassment” and “contacted by university police,” because he supported US “intervention in Afghanistan” in statements he made “behind closed doors to a female graduate student.” This student is supposed to have “complained that [Dr. Adams’] position made her ‘uncomfortable.’” The facts: Dr. Adams was not charged with harassment but with having sent an abusive and libelous e-mail letter to an undergraduate, in violation of professional ethics and the University’s computing policy. He was not contacted by the campus police. He did not state his support of US intervention in Afghanistan. He did not discuss this matter with Rosa behind closed doors. Rosa has not said Dr. Adams’ position on US intervention made her feel “uncomfortable,” partly because Dr. Adams has not yet publicly declared his position on this intervention…He needs to turn this case into a story of his harassment by the “tyranny of the touchy-feely,” in Mr. Halvorssen’s [executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education] mordant words. He has to be seen as the victim of politically correct university administrators who “are terrified of being insensitive to certain views or certain minorities.” Hence: Rosa is falsely turned into a female graduate student, who has been made to feel uncomfortable, by the words of a male professor, uttered behind closed doors, and who vindictively charges him with (sexual?) harassment .

So, it looks like Adams did cleverly use the situation he was in to present himself as a conservative victim of all that is PC, and this propelled him to Clash Radio fame and Townhall glory.

In September of this year, the Wilmington Star News carried a profile on Adams, to which some of his colleagues contributed:

Now, as a man who maintains that “feminist scholar” is an oxymoron along the lines of “jumbo shrimp,” and believes that homosexuality is incompatible with the Bible, Dr. Adams is a divisive character of the first order. Some think he provokes debate; others think he’s a hack and a hatchet man.

“He’s a valuable asset at the university,” said Lee Johnston, a professor of political science at UNCW who likens Dr. Adams to the boy who says the emperor has no clothes. “A university is supposed to be a place of dialogue, of examining ideas. You can’t examine an idea if everybody says the same thing on everything.”

“He’s a pathological liar,” said Lynne Snowden, also an associate professor in the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department.

In his chapter “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” Dr. Adams accuses her of making unsubstantiated sexual harassment complaints against the former department chairman and of being of being of questionable mental health. She said she thinks Dr. Adams is mentally unbalanced. She said she had not read his book.

Adams posted online the section of his book dealing with Snowden after this article appeared. It’s a rather odd account in which Snowden appears at a meeting making accusations of harassment and, more bizarrely, of someone damaging a watchstrap. The question is not so much whether Adams is making it up or not as what the point is he’s trying to make. Is he just getting revenge on Snowden for something, or is the message the rather boorish one that women, especially those who claim harassment, are nuts? Or the commonplace one that sometimes people don’t always tell the truth?

Despite his sneer that ‘”feminist scholar” is an oxymoron’, Adams is very thin skinned when it comes to religion, and would find the parallel statement that ‘”Christian scholar” is an oxymoron’ an affront of Neroic proportions. Many of his columns deal with supposed persecution of Christian groups on campuses, and he now paints his dispute with Boseman as one of Evangelicals being persecuted for daring to offend a homosexual. The facts are simply that, during the election campaign, a one-time co-writer with Adams named Charlton Allen (who had founded the conservative collegiate magazine at UNC) decided to publish an advert attacking Boseman for being gay and accepting support from a gay lobby group called the Victory Fund. Said the advert:

The FIRST Openly Gay or Lesbian State Senator in North Carolina History

What is Julia Boseman’s Agenda?

Julia Boseman seeks to become the first openly gay or lesbian legislator in North Carolina. She has been soliciting and accepting thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from outside the state gay and lesbian organizations and individuals. She even held a Washington, DC fundraiser (a “Champagne Brunch”) on October 3rd at the home of known lesbian activists.

…we felt it was important for you to know the truth as represented in the excerpts from victoryfund.org…

As a result of this piece of work the Wilmington Star dropped its support for Woody White (Boseman’s rival) and, afterwards, Boseman won the election. But this was not because Allen miscalculated – according to Adams, it was because White had been smeared as a hater. The smug and legalistic Adams would have us note that the above contains nothing that was untrue or was not taken from the Victory Fund website. Those of us who detect an appeal to homophobia are no doubt just out to abuse good Christians.

However, Boseman has also threatened Adams with defamation proceedings, as Adams had claimed that the child being raised by Boseman and her partner was the biological child of Boseman’s brother, when she claims the sperm was from an anonymous bank. Adams was reduced to bluster, claiming that Boseman had not corrected the draft article he had sent her, so it was her fault rather than his, and he followed this up with some sneering about the immorality of using a sperm bank (one wonders if Adams actually wrote Allen’s advert, as in both cases much of the condemnation is in the tone rather than the wording.). In his latest article, however, he seems to plead justification, claiming inside knowledge of Boseman’s family affairs. He also, though, subtly changes the terms of his accusation, again relying on legalism: he now says that he merely noted that Boseman was raising her nephew (i.e. that her partner is the biological mother). However, the word “nephew” does not appear in the allegedly defaming article, although there are a number of cracks about inbreeding (i.e. hinting strongly, but not actually saying, that Boseman is the biological mother of her brother’s biological child).

So, will this fizzle out? Will Boseman launch a court case that will confirm Snowden’s opinion that Adams is indeed a “pathological liar”? Or will she, like Fuller, serve only to further the media career of one of the cleverest conservative demagogues in the business today?

(Updated and expanded)

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I’m a bit busy at the moment; in the meantime as a filler here’s a nice detail about the last days of Joseph Mengele, courtesy of The Guardian:

Fear of being discovered made him chew the ends of his moustache, resulting in a ball of hair blocking his intestines.

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