'Fahrenheit,' 'Passion' Win People's Choice Awards

Mon Jan 10, 2005 12:11 AM ET
By Bob Tourtellotte

PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - Two hit films that have been snubbed this awards season in Hollywood snared top People's Choice honors on Sunday as anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" was named best film and "The Passion of The Christ" best film drama.

In television categories, sensation "Desperate Housewives" was the top new drama and "Joey," starring former "Friends" star Matt LeBlanc, was best new comedy. Veteran shows "Will & Grace" and "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" earned the honors best TV comedy and TV drama, respectively.

Over the next several weeks, many professional associations and critics groups in the United States will pick best films, TV shows, songs and musicians during the annual awards season.

The People's Choice Awards, however, gauge fan appeal. This year, favorites were chosen by 21 million online voters.

Neither "Fahrenheit" nor "Passion" have fared well in award voting from critics and media groups, and "Passion" director Mel Gibson has vowed not to campaign his film for an Oscar, as many other film producers and directors do.

"To me, really, this is the ultimate goal because one doesn't make work for the elite," Gibson told reporters backstage. "To me, the people have spoken."

"Fahrenheit" director Michael Moore dedicated his trophy to the soldiers in Iraq. His film was highly critical of President Bush and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and Moore was an outspoken Bush critic in the 2004 presidential campaign in which Democratic challenger John Kerry lost.

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND

"This country is still all of ours, not right or left or Democrat or Republican," Moore said to the audience.

One published report had speculated about whether the pair were tipped to be at the People's Choice Awards to accept their awards. Backstage, Gibson denied the speculation.

Moore also was invited to attend a New York Film Critics Circle dinner tonight in New York, but said he came to Pasadena because it was "an historic occasion" that the 31-year-old awards show would nominate a documentary for best film.

Among other winners, "Shrek 2," the U.S. No. 1 box office hit with $436 million, was picked both top animated movie and top film comedy.
 
Johnny Depp was named favorite male movie star. Julia Roberts was the top female movie star, but Renee Zellweger was favorite leading lady.

In television groups, "Joey" walked off with a second award for Matt LeBlanc as favorite male TV star. The former "Friends" star reprises his role as a struggling actor in "Joey."

"CSI" star Marg Helgenberger was favorite female TV star.

Nominees for the People's Choice Awards were picked by some 6,000 people who are part of Entertainment Weekly magazine's "Front Row Panel," then winners were decided via online voting.

The People's Choice Awards aired on the CBS television network, a unit of media conglomerate Viacom Inc.

© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

To Try to Net Killer, Police Ask a Small Town's Men for DNA
 
By PAM BELLUCK

Published: January 10, 2005
 
TRURO, Mass., Jan. 7 - In an unusual last-ditch move to find clues to the three-year-old killing of a freelance fashion writer, police investigators are trying to get DNA samples from every man in this Cape Cod hamlet, all 790 or so, or as many as will agree.

Raising concerns among civil libertarians and prompting both resistance and support from men in Truro, the state and local police began collecting the genetic samples last week, visiting delicatessens, the post office and even the town dump to politely ask men to cooperate. Legal experts said the sweeping approach had been used only in limited instances before in the United States - although it is more widely used in Europe - and in at least one of those cases it prompted a lawsuit.

Sgt. David Perry of the Truro Police Department and other law enforcement authorities here say that the program is voluntary but that they will pay close attention to those who refuse to provide DNA.

"We're trying to find that person who has something to hide," Sergeant Perry said.

The killing was the most notorious in this resort community in memory. Christa Worthington, 46, who had lived in New York and Paris and London before retreating to the quiet sea-stung town, was found stabbed to death in her bungalow here on Jan. 6, 2002, her 2-year-old daughter, Ava, clinging to her body.

Semen was found on the body, and in the last three years the police have investigated a former boyfriend and other men, including a married man who is Ava's father.

"All those people are ruled out at this point," Sergeant Perry said.

A $25,000 reward failed to crack the case, which generated international publicity and a lurid book, "Invisible Eden," by Maria Flook, with explicit details of Ms. Worthington's love interests and violent death.

So the police sought help from the F.B.I., which said it thought the killer had Truro ties and suggested trying to match the semen in a global genetic canvass.

"The person we're looking for is the one who deposited the DNA" by having sex with Ms. Worthington before she died, Sergeant Perry said. "We're not saying that this is the killer. What we're saying is we need to talk to this person, who may be just the last person to see her alive."

Stopping in the Highland Grill in Truro on a frigid Friday, Jeff Evans plunked down $2 for a brownie almost as big as a paperback. Then, at the prompting of a state police detective and a Truro police officer parked at the grill's counter, Mr. Evans, 46, a pest exterminator, wiped the inside of his cheek with a lollipop-like cotton swab, capturing a smidgen of genetic evidence to give to the government men. Sam Scherer, 18, another Highland Grill patron, had already done the same thing. So had Jerrid Bearse, 20.

While many residents have cooperated, some have complained that the DNA sweep is coercive.

"I think it's outrageous," said Dick Seed, 44, a Truro sign painter who called the American Civil Liberties Union to complain.

"I really think they're usurping my civil rights," said Mr. Seed, who may know something about DNA because his father is Dr. Richard Seed, the eccentric physicist who drew worldwide attention by announcing seven years ago that he planned to clone humans. "Are they going to chase down everyone who didn't give a sample? It kind of sounds like Stalin's secret police. If there's a murder committed in a restroom, are they going to be asking for a urine sample?"

Mass DNA collection drives, as needle-in-a-haystack as they might sound, have yielded results in criminal investigations in England and Germany. Six years ago in Germany, for example, authorities investigating the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl collected DNA samples from 16,400 men, a sweep believed to be the largest to date. DNA from one man matched the evidence, prompting him to confess his guilt.

In this country, the technique has been tried in a few places, generally with less success. It is usually used in a more targeted way than in Truro.

In Baton Rouge, La., in 2003, authorities trying to find a serial killer took swabs from 1,200 white men who drove white pickup trucks, but the dragnet did not yield a suspect; a black man was later arrested using other investigative methods. In Omaha last year, the police, searching for a serial rapist, sought DNA from about three dozen black men who worked for the Omaha Public Power District. And in a rape investigation in Charlottesville, Va., the police over the last two years have asked for swabs from about 200 black men.

These investigations have been contentious, especially when the authorities hold on to the DNA of people found to have no connection to the crime. Baton Rouge law enforcement agencies are being sued by nearly two dozen of the 1,200 men they tested; the men want their DNA samples destroyed and their genetic information removed from a databank that can be used in investigations of other crimes.

"They're not very effective and they're certainly not voluntarily," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's either give a sample or you're a suspect. It turns the classic American concept of innocent until proven guilty on its head."

Figuring that the winter population of Truro would be similar to what it was three years ago, investigators chose the days around the anniversary of the killing to begin passing the hat for DNA all over town.

When this summer resort gets a whiff of winter it contracts like a rubber band, leaving only a handful of hangouts open for business. They are places like Dutra's Market, the Filling Station deli, the town dump and the post office, a daily stop for many Truro residents because they do not have home mail delivery.

Since Wednesday, two-person police swab squads have sidled into sub shops and perched by the postal counter, seeking a donation from anyone with a Y chromosome.

The investigators are intentionally mild-mannered in their queries, asking for help, not threatening retaliation. Sometimes they display a photograph of Ava, who is now 5 and living with her mother's friends, and ask the men to help solve the investigation for Ava's sake. They ask the men to sign a card giving their birthday and race, and they ask if the men knew Ms. Worthington or her relatives, some of whom have lived here for years. They take down the license plate numbers of people they approach. They say they may start soliciting DNA in neighboring towns, too, like Wellfleet and Provincetown.

The police found 75 volunteers on the first day alone, Sergeant Perry said. But they have also been rejected by men who say they are offended or uncomfortable.

"Sorry, I just don't like to be around cops," Virge Peres, 28, told Christopher Mason, the state police detective who stopped him at the Highland Grill.

"It's invasive," said Mike McGuinness, 67, at the town dump on Friday. He said he would refuse if asked. "If they have a suspicion of someone and they ask them, that's one thing. But not just doing it willy-nilly."

The police say they will discard any DNA that does not match their sample and will not keep a databank. But several Truro residents, even those who gave their DNA, said they were skeptical of that, as did John Reinstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

Mr. Reinstein said that as of Friday he had received three calls from Truro residents.

"We're very concerned about using DNA sweeps as an investigative tool," he said. "If there's a person out there and has yet to come forward and say he had been with Christa Worthington before she was murdered, that person is not likely to say, 'Test my DNA and see if it matches the crime scene.' From that it seems that what they're looking for is the people who turn them down. So in some way it's saying, 'Will you please come forward and identify yourself as murder suspect.' "

Among the men who gave saliva at the post office was Beau Jackett, a son of Tony Jackett, who is Ava's father and was a suspect early on.

Tony Jackett gave his own DNA soon after the killing and has sold the rights to his story to a California filmmaker. "Most people, I think, agree that they should do whatever it takes to get the guy," he said.

Leo Rose, 49, gave a sample at the Filling Station deli, figuring he had nothing to hide.

"They're not supposed to keep it," Mr. Rose said. "If I did something stupid down the road and they had my sample on file, well, then it's an illegal search and seizure."

Edward Friedman, an older man who hobbles painstakingly, seemed amused that anyone would think he could be a match. "I can barely make it to the car," Mr. Friedman said.

But Craig Hathaway, owner of Dutra's Market, who said he felt he had to allow the police to approach his customers, will not give his DNA.

"Don't get me wrong, I want to see this thing solved as much as the next person," Mr. Hathaway said. "I'm just not sure this is the way to do it."

And Mr. Seed said, "Why don't they just ask me where I was when the murder happened? I was playing poker. What else is there to do here in the winter?"

Sergeant Perry said that aside from the DNA, the police hoped revived publicity about the case would "get people thinking again" about tiny details that might be helpful.

People in this peaceful place are certainly eager to have the crime solved, said Fred Simonin, owner of the Highland, who said some customers had come in just to donate DNA.

"We're not used to having a murderer around," Mr. Simonin said.

Katie Zezima contributed reporting from Boston for this article.

Perhaps you've heard of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. This fictional thriller has captured the coveted number one sales ranking at Amazon.com, camped out for 32 weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller List, and inspired a one-hour ABC News special. Along the way, it has sparked debates about the legitimacy of Western and Christian history.

While the ABC News feature focused on Brown's fascination with an alleged marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, The Da Vinci Code contains many more (equally dubious) claims about Christianity's historic origins and theological development. The central claim Brown's novel makes about Christianity is that "almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false." Why? Because of a single meeting of bishops in 325, at the city of Nicea in modern-day Turkey. There, argues Brown, church leaders who wanted to consolidate their power base (he calls this, anachronistically, "the Vatican" or "the Roman Catholic church") created a divine Christ and an infallible Scripture—both of them novelties that had never before existed among Christians.

Watershed at Nicea
Brown is right about one thing (and not much more). In the course of Christian history, few events loom larger than the Council of Nicea in 325. When the newly converted Roman Emperor Constantine called bishops from around the world to present-day Turkey, the church had reached a theological crossroads.

Led by an Alexandrian theologian named Arius, one school of thought argued that Jesus had undoubtedly been a remarkable leader, but he was not God in flesh. Arius proved an expert logician and master of extracting biblical proof texts that seemingly illustrated differences between Jesus and God, such as John 14:28: "the Father is greater than I." In essence, Arius argued that Jesus of Nazareth could not possibly share God the Father's unique divinity.

In The Da Vinci Code, Brown apparently adopts Arius as his representative for all pre-Nicene Christianity. Referring to the Council of Nicea, Brown claims that "until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet … a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless."

In reality, early Christians overwhelmingly worshipped Jesus Christ as their risen Savior and Lord. Before the church adopted comprehensive doctrinal creeds, early Christian leaders developed a set of instructional summaries of belief, termed the "Rule" or "Canon" of Faith, which affirmed this truth. To take one example, the canon of prominent second-century bishop Irenaeus took its cue from 1 Corinthians 8:6: "Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ."

The term used here—Lord, Kyrios—deserves a bit more attention. Kyrios was used by the Greeks to denote divinity (though sometimes also, it is true, as a simple honorific). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, pre-dating Christ), this term became the preferred substitution for "Jahweh," the holy name of God. The Romans also used it to denote the divinity of their emperor, and the first-century Jewish writer Josephus tells us that the Jews refused to use it of the emperor for precisely this reason: only God himself was kyrios.

The Christians took over this usage of kyrios and applied it to Jesus, from the earliest days of the church. They did so not only in Scripture itself (which Brown argues was doctored after Nicea), but in the earliest extra-canonical Christian book, the Didache, which scholars agree was written no later than the late 100s. In this book, the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christians refer to Jesus as Lord.

In addition, pre-Nicene Christians acknowledged Jesus's divinity by petitioning God the Father in Christ's name. Church leaders, including Justin Martyr, a second-century luminary and the first great church apologist, baptized in the name of the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—thereby acknowledging the equality of the one Lord's three distinct persons.

The Council of Nicea did not entirely end the controversy over Arius's teachings, nor did the gathering impose a foreign doctrine of Christ's divinity on the church. The participating bishops merely affirmed the historic and standard Christian beliefs, erecting a united front against future efforts to dilute Christ's gift of salvation.

"Fax from Heaven"?
With the Bible playing a central role in Christianity, the question of Scripture's historic validity bears tremendous implications. Brown claims that Constantine commissioned and bankrolled a staff to manipulate existing texts and thereby divinize the human Christ.

Yet for a number of reasons, Brown's speculations fall flat. Brown correctly points out that "the Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven." Indeed, the Bible's composition and consolidation may appear a bit too human for the comfort of some Christians. But Brown overlooks the fact that the human process of canonization had progressed for centuries before Nicea, resulting in a nearly complete canon of Scripture before Nicea or even Constantine's legalization of Christianity in 313.

Ironically, the process of collecting and consolidating Scripture was launched when a rival sect produced its own quasi-biblical canon. Around 140 a Gnostic leader named Marcion began spreading a theory that the New and Old Testaments didn't share the same God. Marcion argued that the Old Testament's God represented law and wrath while the New Testament's God, represented by Christ, exemplified love. As a result Marcion rejected the Old Testament and the most overtly Jewish New Testament writings, including Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Hebrews. He manipulated other books to downplay their Jewish tendencies. Though in 144 the church in Rome declared his views heretical, Marcion's teaching sparked a new cult. Challenged by Marcion's threat, church leaders began to consider earnestly their own views on a definitive list of Scriptural books including both the Old and New Testaments.

Another rival theology nudged the church toward consolidating the New Testament. During the mid- to late-second century, a man from Asia Minor named Montanus boasted of receiving a revelation from God about an impending apocalypse. The four Gospels and Paul's epistles achieved wide circulation and largely unquestioned authority within the early church but hadn't yet been collected in a single authoritative book. Montanus saw in this fact an opportunity to spread his message, by claiming authoritative status for his new revelation. Church leaders met the challenge around 190 and circulated a definitive list of apostolic writings that is today called the Muratorian Canon, after its modern discoverer. The Muratorian Canon bears striking resemblance to today's New Testament but includes two books, Revelation of Peter and Wisdom of Solomon, which were later excluded from the canon.

By the time of Nicea, church leaders debated the legitimacy of only a few books that we accept today, chief among them Hebrews and Revelation, because their authorship remained in doubt. In fact, authorship was the most important consideration for those who worked to solidify the canon. Early church leaders considered letters and eyewitness accounts authoritative and binding only if they were written by an apostle or close disciple of an apostle. This way they could be assured of the documents' reliability. As pastors and preachers, they also observed which books did in fact build up the church—a good sign, they felt, that such books were inspired Scripture. The results speak for themselves: the books of today's Bible have allowed Christianity to spread, flourish, and endure worldwide.

Though unoriginal in its allegations, The Da Vinci Code proves that some misguided theories never entirely fade away. They just reappear periodically in a different disguise. Brown's claims resemble those of Arius and his numerous heirs throughout history, who have contradicted the united testimony of the apostles and the early church they built. Those witnesses have always attested that Jesus Christ was and remains God himself. It didn't take an ancient council to make this true. And the pseudohistorical claims of a modern novel can't make it false.

For more on what the early church fathers can teach us about Jesus and the Bible, see our sequel to this article. To schedule an interview with Collin Hansen, please contact him contact him at cheditor@christianhistory.net.

'Though the Heavens May Fall' and 'Bury the Chains': Freed

Chad Roberts

Ed Lam

The Value of Self-Denial

Self-denial does not deprive us of anything good, but rather, it frees us to receive God’s best.

By: Dwight Baltzell

As the coming of the Lord draws nearer and the world gets increasingly wicked, principles stated in God’s Word sound more and more foreign. In time, they can even begin to sound foreign to a Christian! That is particularly true of the topic of self-denial.

When we hear words like “consecration” and “willingness,” it may be easy to apply them to someone with a particular call to the mission field, or some other form of ministry. Certainly people called to these areas should consecrate and be willing. But is consecration and willingness, or practicing self-denial, only for them?

In Mark 8:34-35 we read, “And when he [Jesus] had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Notice that Jesus’ admonition regarding self-denial was addressed to everyone present, not just the disciples. Then He continued, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”

The world does not question the need for self-denial in some areas. Excelling at a sport and making it into the Hall of Fame takes self-denial, and the world admires that. They respect the determination and the sacrifice it took. Achieving good grades in school and making the honor roll generally takes self-denial. Choices have to be made regarding how time is spent and what to make a priority—that is just the way it is. If self-denial is expected and even respected in the pursuit of secular goals, should it be viewed as unnecessary when it comes to spiritual goals? Of course not!

Verse 36 of Mark 8 tells us: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” There is no greater goal than making Heaven. Sometimes when a person states what he wants to attain in life, he may be told, “It is going to require this and that to achieve your goal. Are you ready to do that?” But the enemy of our souls tells us that it is unreasonable for God to expect any kind of self-denial from us in our pursuit of our spiritual goal.

In Hebrews 11, we read the names of those we sometimes call the “heroes of faith.” We admire their record and, as Christians, we desire to be like them. But if we think it is unreasonable for God to require anything of us that might mean some self-denial, we will not measure up. A lack of self-denial produces mediocrity. How can it do anything else?

It is easy to look at the benefits of Christianity—joy and peace—and desire those benefits in our lives. However, it is not reasonable to think that they should be ours with no expectations or requirements on our part. In Romans 12:1,2, Paul wrote to some early believers, encouraging them to present their bodies a living sacrifice to God. He went on to say that this was just a “reasonable service.”

Can we tell God that His requirements are too hard when we see Jesus’ self-denial? He denied Himself over and over. He would not stand up for Himself when He was falsely accused. He denied Himself all the way to the cross, where He gave His life. Truly, He was the epitome of self-denial. When we think of His sacrifice, could we ever say, “I think that this or that little thing is too hard?” God has done the unreasonable, the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, by giving His Son to restore mankind. Under those circumstances, is anything too much to offer Him? Yet, the devil would like us to think that any self-denial on our part would be an unreasonable requirement.

The very word “self-denial” is actually a reflection of how the world sees the sacrifices that need to be made. What we call self-denial is actually exchanging one thing for something better. Is that really a sacrifice? To a Christian, it may not even register as self-denial at all. When the action or consecration comes from the heart, it means joy and blessing. It is simply being where God can bless us.

At times, we may form an opinion about whether or not self-denial is called for in a situation without searching our hearts in prayer. Before saying, “That doesn’t sound necessary,” or, “I can’t imagine that God would require that,” we had better bring it to God in prayer. See if it fits in anywhere with, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross.” What is the “cross”? It is whatever we need to deny in order to put God first.

Self-denial is a basic principle of maintaining our Christianity. When we buy a new car, something is required from us if we want that car to be maintained in good condition. Certain basic things must be attended to on a regular basis to keep the car running well. The same is true of our Christian lives, and self-denial is one of those basic principles of spiritual maintenance. Hopefully it is in our hearts to say, “Lord, whatever You are talking about, from the smallest of things to much larger, let it be in my heart to say yes to You.”

If spiritual maintenance does not happen, down the road we will end up with things in our lives that we do not want. We may even wonder, How did I ever get here? This was not what I intended. The principle of self-denial must be in our heart—something that says, “Lord, I will do whatever is necessary for my own good. If self-denial is the word used, then Amen. It is only joy to me because it will bring Your blessing upon my life, and that is what I want.”

In Matthew 19, we find the story of a rich young ruler who came running to the Lord. He asked what he needed to do in order to have eternal life, and the Lord began to tell him some of the Commandments. He responded that he had kept them from his youth. But what was the real issue here? On the surface, it might seem to be the young man’s riches. However, they were really only a symptom. The real problem was a lack of self-denial. The rich young ruler was not willing to take up his cross. Common thinking may be that Christianity is not supposed to cost anything—that it is not supposed to “hurt” but just make you feel good. However, that is man’s thinking, not God’s. He says that if we do not deny ourselves and take up our cross, we cannot be His disciples.

How easy it is to move into doing things our way. Because there is a tempter, if we are not careful we can find ourselves saying, “I feel like going there today. I feel like doing that. I feel like talking this way. I feel like dressing as I please.” If self-denial doesn’t come in on issues like these, where does it come in? If you are not careful to exercise self-denial, when necessary, regarding what you do, where you go, who you go around with, what you watch, what you say, and what you wear, what will you be careful about? It is just a matter of feeling, Lord, I love You more than my own way, or my own thoughts. That is self-denial.

You might say, “Well, I told the Lord I wanted to deny myself, and He didn’t say anything about going to China.” Maybe not. Maybe self-denial is something to do with today, a decision that will come your way, a little laying down of your own way in everyday life.
We may circle all around self-denial and say it is not necessary, when all the time it may be the very place where total spiritual victory lies! We may debate it, avoid it, or challenge it, and then wonder why we do not have the victory we desire in our Christian lives. We want to blame it on something else, but many times, all we need to do is to stop and check our self-denial. Those pricks that we feel are because our own will is asserting itself. The Lord is saying, “Deny yourself.” If we can just get hold of that concept, how beautiful it is!

If we see self-denial as anything other than absolute blessedness, then we need God to help us see it from a different angle. It may be called self-denial, but really, it is a delight. David said, “I delight to do thy will, O God.” The more we grasp how God blesses us when we put this principle into effect, the stronger our Christian life and testimony will be. When we give Him a little something—perhaps it doesn’t really amount to anything, but we say, “Lord, I will do that”—we find that He pours out such a blessing that we want to look around and see what else we can give Him! That is the graciousness of God.
Have you seen self-denial in that light? The Lord has great things in store for everyone who will truly deny himself and take up his cross. Will you?

Dwight Baltzell is a Director of Foreign Work for the Apostolic Faith organization, and a minister at the headquarters church in Portland, Oregon.

LONDON (AFP) - Plans to broadcast a London musical that features a nappy-wearing Jesus who admits he is "a bit gay", have sparked a record 5,500 complaints, a television watchdog said.

The BBC nevertheless vowed to go ahead with its plan to show "Jerry Springer The Opera", based on the controversial US talk show and which is still playing to packed houses in the West End of London.

The opera contains a total of 3,168 "f"-words and 297 "c"-words. The expletive-laden songs include Pregnant By A Transsexual and Here Come The Hookers.

British media regulator Ofcom said it had received 5,500 complaints about the plan to broadcast the show, which is due to be screened on Saturday as the centrepiece of Jerry Springer Night on BBC2.

That figure is three times as many as the previous record holder, Martin Scorsese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ," which sparked 1,554 complaints when it was shown on television here in 1995, it said.

The BBC added that it has received more than 15,000 calls from viewers concerned about the programme.

But the National Secular Society urged the national broadcaster to stand firm against "religious bullies".

"This organised attack is the latest of a series of attempts by religious interests to control what we can see or say in this country," said the group's vice-president Terry Sanderson.

The furore follows a Sikh protest in Birmingham over the staging of a controversial play "Behzti" (Dishonour), which depicts murder and rape in a fictional Sikh temple.

Violent protests led the Birmingham Repertory Theatre to cancel the production.

American bankers handled his loot. Oil companies play by his rules. The Bush administration woos him. How the pursuit of oil is propping up the West African dictatorship of Teodoro Obiang.

By Peter Maass
Illustration By: Jeffrey Decoster
Map by Baker Vail

January/February 2005 Issue

The red dirt of the jungle meets a paved road on the outskirts of Ebebiyin, where a national celebration is about to begin. Women are singing and swaying in an African rhythm that is hard to resist, even though their lyrics are not of a can’t-stop-dancing variety: “We await you, Mr. President,” they sing in Fang, the main language in Equatorial Guinea. “We are happy to see you; you are the people’s president.” In the distance, a cloud of Martian dust heralds the arrival of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The president is accompanied by 40 vehicles and enough firepower to start a small war. In the lead are army-green trucks, with soldiers clad in black ninja outfits. Because the president doesn’t entirely trust his military, the jeeps in front of his Lexus SUV bear his Moroccan security guards, many of them perched on the running boards, clutching Heckler & Koch assault rifles as they scan the horizon.

The motorcade halts at the edge of the town and its chickens-in-the-road squalor. Obiang strolls up the street, shaking hands with people who line the uneven sidewalks, many clad in T-shirts and dresses bearing his image. His bearing is regal. If he has any anxiety because of a recent coup attempt, which involved a gang of couldn’t-shoot-straight mercenaries from South Africa and Britain (allegedly financed by the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), he does not betray it. And if his mind is troubled by a recent U.S. Senate investigation detailing how he siphoned millions from his country’s treasury with the help of Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., and how he and members of his inner circle extracted large and unorthodox payments from American oil companies, that, too, does not show.

Obiang has traveled to Equatorial Guinea’s mainland from his palace on the island capital of Malabo to celebrate the 36th anniversary of independence from Spain. The three-day gala is replete with references to the 1979 overthrow of Francisco Macias Nguema, the nation’s first dictator. Macias, who once tortured and killed political opponents in a soccer stadium, drowning out their screams by playing “Those Were the Days” on the loudspeakers, was ousted and executed in a coup led by a senior military aide who was also his nephew -- Teodoro Obiang.

For “El Libertador,” as Obiang allows himself to be called, the highlight of the October celebration is a parade down Ebebiyin’s finest stretch of asphalt. About a hundred goose-stepping soldiers lead the way, and through bouts of equatorial heat and showers, delegations from seemingly every town and organization in the nation march by with banners saluting the president and ruling party.

The heat, the soldiers, the jungle, the out-of-tune band -- I was starting to feel I had fallen into a tin-pot time warp. Then I noticed the American flags. These were carried by a delegation from Mobil Equatorial Guinea, Inc., a subsidiary of ExxonMobil. They also carried white Exxon flags and placards bearing ExxonMobil’s name. Behind them came delegations with signs announcing Halliburton, ChevronTexaco, Marathon Oil.

In the past few years, Equatorial Guinea, population 500,000, has become the third-largest oil exporter in sub-Saharan Africa, after Nigeria and Angola. Per capita, it is one of the richest countries on the continent; rated by how much money ends up in the pockets of people not related to the president, it remains one of the poorest. Oil is the reason the desperate-looking cafés and shops in Ebebiyin use ExxonMobil signs as decorations. It is why, although his regime once sent death threats to the U.S. ambassador, Obiang now meets with senior administration officials and even with President Bush. And it’s why no one spoke out as Obiang treated his nation’s treasury as his own private bank account.

Equatorial Guinea sometimes seems a parody of an oil kleptocracy -- a Blazing Saddles of the world of petroleum. Yet it has emerged as an all-too-real example of how a dictator, awash in petrodollars, enriches himself and his family while starving his people. His conduct has been aided by American companies: As detailed in Senate and Treasury Department documents, Riggs Bank helped Obiang shuttle millions into offshore accounts. Oil companies, meanwhile, made payments to his regime that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now scrutinizing under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

If America’s interest in foreign countries were predicated on human rights, Equatorial Guinea would have seized our attention long before its 1995 oil boom. Francisco Macias Nguema, whose self-bestowed titles included “Leader of Steel,” “The Sole Miracle of Equatorial Guinea,” and, of course, “President for Life,” was a morph of Idi Amin and Pol Pot. He killed or forced into exile nearly a third of the population, decimating in particular the small educated class. Some of his victims were crucified on the road leading to the airport. It was one of the 20th century’s most brutal genocides, but no foreign power except for Equatorial Guinea’s former colonial ruler paid attention to it, and the fascist regime of Spain’s Francisco Franco was not overly troubled by human rights abuses. Obiang’s coup was a welcome event, and his rule has not been nearly as ruthless as his uncle’s. Of course,that’s not much of an achievement.

Recent State Department reports define Equatorial Guinea as a nominal democracy but note that “in practice power is exercised by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.” In the latest election, Obiang was reelected with 97 percent of the vote in an election “marred by extensive fraud and intimidation.” “Corruption among officials is widespread,” one report adds; the distribution of oil revenues, meanwhile, has “lacked transparency despite repeated calls from international financial institutions and citizens for greater financial openness.” And finally, “There is little evidence that the country’s oil wealth is being devoted to the public good.”

Human rights abuses continue unchecked. An oil company employee was recently beaten unconscious by gendarmes when he refused to pay a bribe. In 2002, more than a dozen security officials at the airport in Bata, the country’s commercial center, were arrested after they allowed an opposition leader to board a plane for Gabon. If you happen to be a member of the opposition, or even a suspected member of the opposition, you live precariously.

For an intimate portrait of what “torture” and “abuse” mean in the context of Equatorial Guinea, I consulted Tropical Gangsters by Robert Klitgaard, an economist who worked in Malabo during the late 1980s. The book ends with Klitgaard protesting the torture of a local colleague who was taken to the presidential compound above Malabo’s harbor, blindfolded, and had his hands tied behind his back. He was then hung by his ankles -- as Klitgaard writes, “like a marlin at the weight scale” -- and lowered into a barrel of soapy water and kept there until he choked. He was pulled out, questioned, and submerged again. This went on for several hours. Later, electric shocks were administered to his genitals. He was eventually released.

Even foreign officials have not been excluded from thuggery. John Bennett was the U.S. envoy to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, and his outspokenness about such abuses angered Obiang. One evening he received a death threat at the U.S. Embassy. When I talked with Bennett recently, he recalled meeting the country’s president after the incident. “Obiang said he couldn’t believe anyone would threaten the American ambassador,” Bennett said drolly. “It was pretty low comedy.” Soon after, in 1995, the embassy was closed because of concerns over corruption and human rights.

The country might have disappeared from our geopolitical radar had Mobil not struck oil in the waters off Malabo later that year. It quickly became clear that the Zafiro oil field was world-class. After a decade of development, oil production in Equatorial Guinea stands at more than 300,000 barrels a day, which at current prices translates to nearly $5.5 billion a year. A gas field owned by Marathon Oil has also become a major producer, and the ocean beds off Equatorial Guinea are being combed for additional deposits. Energy companies have invested several billion dollars in Equatorial Guinea, and Marathon is building a major liquefied natural gas facility. It is now possible to fly nonstop from Malabo to Texas on a weekly flight known as the “Houston Express.”

Equatorial Guinea is not the only country in the region to have emerged as a major oil supplier for the United States. West Africa is central to America’s effort to reduce dependency on Middle East oil. The region currently supplies 15 percent of America’s energy, and that figure is expected to rise to 25 percent within a few years. A report prepared by the African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOPIG), a panel of U.S. government and energy industry officials brought together by the Jerusalem-based neoconservative Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, proposed that the Gulf of Guinea be declared a “vital interest” in U.S. national security policy. The report, unveiled at a press conference in 2002 by several congressmen, proposed that the U.S. military presence be enhanced to include a unified military command for Africa and a home port in São Tomé, an island state in this gulf. Three months later, President Bush convened a meeting with Obiang and nine other Central African leaders at the United Nations to discuss military and energy security. And in a sign of Equatorial Guinea’s new strategic role, a lieutenant colonel in the Special Forces -- the U.S. military attaché from neighboring Cameroon -- represented the Pentagon in the grandstand at the independence parade in Ebebiyin.

U.S. corporations are now investing more in Equatorial Guinea than in any other African country except for Nigeria and South Africa. In 2003, the Bush administration reopened the embassy, a move sharply criticized by human rights groups as a favor to the oil companies and to Obiang. Frank Ruddy, U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea in the mid-1980s, decries current U.S. policy, saying that Bush administration officials are “big cheerleaders for the government -- and it’s an awful government.”

Obiang has few friends. He has alienated the Spanish -- and through them the entire European Union -- by accusing Madrid of involvement in the March 2004 coup attempt. Aside from the Chinese, only the Bush administration seems to like Obiang. No senior administration official has issued a public word of criticism against his regime. Instead, in June 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham each met privately with Obiang in Washington. When I interviewed Gabriel Nguema Lima, Obiang’s son, he warmly saluted the Bush administration: “The United States, like China, is careful not to get into internal issues.”

Equatorial Guinea exemplifies what is known as the “resource curse,” the paradox by which countries rich in oil, gas, or minerals tend to suffer rather than benefit, because the abundance of “easy money” undermines healthy economic and political development. In Nigeria -- to cite a classic example -- total oil revenues have topped hundreds of billions of dollars, but poverty is worse than it was before the oil rush began more than 20 years ago; corruption is a national sport, and the country is fissuring along ethnic lines.

In Equatorial Guinea, nearly half of all children under five are malnourished. Even major cities lack clean water and basic sanitation. A health consultant who recently visited Equatorial Guinea for the first time since 1993 wrote with dismay in the International Herald Tribune: “Despite the oil boom, I was unable to see any improvements in the living standards of ordinary people.” (Obiang is not among the ordinary: In 1999 he paid $2.6 million -- cash -- for a mansion outside Washington, D.C. One of his wives had a $10,000 daily limit on her Riggs Bank debit card.)

On my way to Ebebiyin, I was stopped several times by underpaid or rarely paid soldiers who demanded bribes -- in their parlance cerveza, or beer money. In the town itself, the main hospital is a place for dying, not healing. The wards are dingy rooms with soiled mattresses and no medical equipment except for a couple of IV drips. By contrast, the town’s sparkling conference hall is air-conditioned and had, during a reception for Obiang’s cabinet the evening before the parade, a 25-foot table stocked with bottles of Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, and Spanish wine. Apart from such showcase buildings, even government facilities can be decrepit. When I interviewed the minister of education in his office, only one of the two light fixtures had a bulb and I could not tell whether it worked because the power was out.

Yet to Western oil companies, Equatorial Guinea is an ideal partner. Nearly all of its oil and gas reserves are offshore, which means securing the fields is relatively easy. ExxonMobil and Marathon workers live in gated compounds that operate their own electrical, water, and communication systems. Unlike in Nigeria or Saudi Arabia, foreign workers do not face major security threats, and the government’s brutish security apparatus has kept the violent-crime rate low. Expats freely cruise the rutted streets of Malabo in their pickup trucks and hang out at the most popular bars, like La Bamba and Shangri-La, among an abundance of professional women, known as “night fighters” because they bicker over prospective clients.

Most important for oil companies, Equatorial Guinea is a profitable place to do business. According to a 1999 report by the International Monetary Fund, oil companies received “by far the most generous tax and profit-sharing provisions in the region.” The state received only 15 to 40 percent of the revenues from its oil fields, while the norm in sub-Saharan Africa was 45 to 90 percent.

Even so, the government is expected to reap $1.5 billion in oil revenues this year, or about $3,000 per capita. But that figure is deeply misleading; for the average Equatoguinean, scraping by on roughly $2 a day, $3,000 is an unimaginable fortune. So where does the money go?