Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion

Jerry Boykin, speaking yesterday at the Ocean City Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast (background here):

“The muslim people are a precious people and I respect them and their right to worship, so long as they don’t fall into the category of a radical who wants to destroy the constitution.”

Jerry Boykin, previously:

We need to recognize that Islam itself is not just a religion – it is a totalitarian way of life. It’s a legal system, sharia law; it’s a financial system; it’s a moral code; it’s a political system; it’s a military system. It should not be protected under the First Amendment, particularly given that those following the dictates of the Quran are under an obligation to destroy our Constitution and replace it with sharia law.

Plus:

No mosques in America…. A mosque is an embassy for Islam and they recognize only a global caliphate, not the sanctity or sovereignty of the United States.

Just a few days ago, the Tennessee Freedom Coalition posted a video in which Boykin warns about the “Muslim propaganda playbook”, that Muslims are “implementing their plan”, and that “the target is our constitution”. In that speech, Boykin identifies “the theology of Islam” and “authoritative Islam” as the enemies: no distinction is made between Muslims, Islamists, and Jihadis.

Perhaps Boykin has had a change of heart; more likely, though, is that he defines “the category of a radical” so broadly that a Muslim who doesn’t “want to destroy the constitution” is either uninformed about his or her own religion, or belongs to a fringe, “non-authoritative” form of Islam.

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Back in July 2010, I was surprised to find that I had provoked the wrath of bestselling conservative thriller author Brad Thor:

I guess with Instaputz, Bartholomew, and Media Matters on the scene, the rest of the milblogging community can finally hang up their cleats.

…Lefty journalism is only fun after all when you can selectively attack sources.  Behold the utter nihilism of the left – available at a progressive website near you.

This was a strangely thinned-skin response to a blog-post in which I had discussed Thor’s alleged scoop – published by Andrew Breitbart the preceding May – that Mullah Omar had been “captured” by Pakistani authorities. Thor announced that

At the end of March, US Military Intelligence was informed by US operatives working in the Af/Pak theater on behalf of the D.O.D. that Omar had been detained by Pakistani authorities. One would assume that this would be passed up the chain and that the Secretary of Defense would have been alerted immediately.  From what I am hearing, that may not have been the case.

When this explosive information was quietly confirmed to United States Intelligence ten days ago by Pakistani authorities, it appeared to take the Defense Department by surprise. No one, though, is going to be more surprised than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  It seems even with confirmation from the Pakistanis themselves, she was never brought up to speed.

I expressed some scepticism a few weeks later, although I thought I had been fair-minded enough: I noted that Jeremy Scahill at the Nation had tentatively suggested that there might be something in it, while David Horowitz’s Newsrealblog had been unimpressed.

Thor quietly modified his position soon after, quoting Bill Roggio’s suggestion that Omar “is thought to be in a safehouse in Karachi, under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate”:

We believe we have a semantic difference with Roggio: “captured” or “protected,” why hasn’t the U.S. gotten access to Omar?

That “semantic difference” amounted to something of an anti-climax: Thor’s “explosive information” was in fact a story which was already three-and-a-half years old. As the BBC reported January 2007:

Taleban leader Mullah Omar is living in Pakistan under the protection of its ISI intelligence agency, a captured Taleban spokesman has said.

I was reminded of all this recently when I came across last week’s New Yorker, which contains a long profile of Mullah Omar by Steve Coll. According to Coll:

Alex Strick van Linschoten [website here - RB], a Dutch scholar who has been based in Kandahar since 2007 and has conducted interviews with Taliban leaders and sympathizers, told me that he believes Mullah Omar is “in a safe house in Karachi”… and that Omar’s movements and activities are closely  monitored by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Strick van Linschoten’s informants describe Omar as “essentially a prisoner”. Coll also cites journalist Anand Gopal, who regards Omar as being “effectively under house arrest”, and he notes that an Indian official at a US-Indian counterterrorism meeting last year had described Omar as being under “Pakistani protection”. Coll also spoke with “half a dozen American officials”, whose

views range from a belief that Omar is essentially under house arrest to a judgement that he enjoys considerable freedom of movement and action within Pakistan.

However, nowhere in Coll’s extensive and definitive account is there any mention of a particular development that supposedly occurred in May 2010, let alone “explosive information” that had taken the US Defense Department “by surprise”.

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January 2011:

This month, when a group of New York City police officers showed up for their required counter-terrorism training, they got to watch a movie.

…The film is called The Third Jihad. It is 72 minutes of gruesome footage of bombing carnage, frenzied crowds, burning American flags, flaming churches, and seething mullahs.

…Police officials agree that this is a “wacky movie,” as deputy commissioner Paul Browne said, that never should have been shown to officers. Browne initially insisted that cops had never seen the flick. “It was reviewed and found to be inappropriate,” he said. Further checking revealed that the movie had been aired for officers. It was a mistake, Browne said. “It was not approved for the curriculum. It’s not shown for any purpose now.”

January 2012:

The movie was shown on a continuous loop while officers were signing in for counterterrorism training sessions from October to December 2010, according to police documents obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank at New York University.

…Browne said that the police brass did not approve the use of the movie and that the decision to play it was made by a sergeant, who has since been reprimanded.

…The film was used as “intermission filler” and to “provide information for students during breaks to keep their attention focused on counterterrorism issues,” Assistant Chief George W. Anderson wrote in one of the documents obtained by the Brennan Center.

As was widely reported, the Third Jihad was produced by the Clarion Fund, which was also responsible for the documentary Obsession (the Fund also promoted the “Islam doll” conspiracy theory). At least one of the “experts” featured in the Obsession film – namely Walid Shoebat – has been known to promote the conspiracy theory that Obama is “really” a Muslim, and the Third Jihad DVD includes footage of Glenn Beck.

Improper counter-terrorism training is a subject that has come under increasing scrutiny over the past year: a critical article appeared in the Washington Post in December 2010, and there was a lengthy article in the Washington Monthly in March 2011 which prompted an expression of concern from Joe Lieberman, in his capacity as Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman, and from Ranking Member Susan Collins. A report by the progressive Political Research Associates also appeared in last spring, while the summer saw critical pieces on CNN and NPR, as well as a report in Wired. Wired also ran a second piece in October.

The police documents obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice can be seen here, and include the following from Anderson:

The video was not a part of the authorized curriculum in place for COBRA training; however, staff at the COBRA Unit indicated they obtained the video from DHS staff who are assigned to work with NYPD instructors in the COBRA program

…The identity of the DHS member who provided the video remains unknown. During the early inquiry into this matter, I contacted Arthur Collins, Assistant Eastern Regional Manager for SAIC Contractor Support to the Center for Domestic Preparedness (DHS), via telephone, to inquire about the video and the DHS position on its use in training programs. Mr. Collins supervises the DHS contract personnel who assist in COBRA training. Mr. Collins indicated in an email response that the video in fact is not an authorized video used by DHS personnel… I conclude that it is likely a DHS member did possess the video and shared it with COBRA staff, but not have official authorization to do so. As such, both the unidentified DHS member and Sgt. Walsh used this video in an unauthorized manner.

Collins confirmed to Anderson that

This video was not authorized to be used at any of the training deliveries either at the COBRA site in Brooklyn or at the CDP resident training program, by SAIC or FEMA.

SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) has a website here; according to a relevant blurb:

We have extensive experience with the component agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and have worked hand in hand with our agency customers to meet their important training, technical, and strategic requirements. 

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that there was involvement between the filmmakers and police:

The New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, through a top aide, acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that he personally cooperated with the filmmakers of “The Third Jihad” — a decision the commissioner now describes as a mistake.

…Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne told The New York Times on Monday that the filmmakers had relied on old interview clips and had never spoken with the commissioner.

…On Tuesday, the film’s producer, Raphael Shore, e-mailed The Times and provided a date and time for their 90-minute interview with the commissioner at Police Headquarters on March 19, 2007. Told of this e-mail, Mr. Browne revised his account.

“He’s right,” Mr. Browne said Tuesday of the producer. “In fact, I recommended in February 2007 that Commissioner Kelly be interviewed.”

In an e-mail, Mr. Browne said that when he first saw the film in 2011, he assumed the commissioner’s interview was taken from old clips, even though the film referred to Mr. Kelly as an “interviewee.” He did not offer an explanation as to why he and the commissioner, on Tuesday, remembered so much of their decision.

…”Commissioner Kelly told me today that the video was objectionable,” he said, “and that he should not have agreed to the interview five years ago, when I recommended it.”

This leaves an unfortunate impression. Paul Browne’s original public position was that this was a “wacky” film which had not been used. Then he admitted that it had been shown. Now it transpires that the film was shown on a “continuous loop” as an “intermission filler”, and that Browne had himself liaised with the film’s producer.

In 2008 I noted that the Third Jihad cover art had been tweaked a couple of times before the documentary came out, although at least one person who left comments wasn’t impressed by my suggestion about why this may have occured.

(H/T Islamophobia Watch)

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A dramatic story from retired General “Jerry” Boykin, former United States Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence:

A couple of years ago they arrested seven terrorists down in North Carolina. A good friend of mine who is very well placed in law enforcement in Virginia called me up and said ‘Sir, I need to meet you, sir I need to talk to you”. I had been mentoring him for a couple of years. I went over and met him in a Starbucks outside of Richmond. I live near Richmond. He said, “Sir, I just came back from the FBI academy”, and he said “those seven people down there that they arrested in North Carolina”, he said, “when they got into their computer they had your name on that computer, and they were going to capture you and torture you.” He said, “they were also going to go to Quantico marine base and they were going to try to just ambush some people and kill some people there.

Boykin is here discussing a terror ring which was uncovered during 2009 and which was led by Daniel Boyd. There were seven arrests, while an eighth member of the group fled to Pakistan. The AP has details of a recent trial related to the case:

Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, Ziyad Yaghi and Hysen Sherifi… were part of a group of eight men who federal investigators say raised money, stockpiled weapons and trained in preparation for jihadist attacks against American military targets and others they deemed enemies of Islam.

…Yaghi was convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism and conspiracy to carry out attacks overseas. Sherifi was convicted for both crimes, two counts of firearms possession, and conspiracy to kill federal officers or employees by discussing an attack on the Quantico, Va., Marine Corps base with ringleader Daniel Boyd, who had lived on the base as a child with his Marine officer father.

Presumably Boykin would come under “others they deemed enemies of Islam”, but it’s peculiar that the story hasn’t come out until now and that Boykin only got to hear about it due to a private source. There’s nothing about it in the indictment.

Boykin’s story appears in a video entitled “Gen. Jerry Boykin with the TFC”, which was posted to the website of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition on 22 January. The TFC has featured on this blog previously – it played a central role in November’s “Preserving Freedom” conference in Nashville. The TFC also has a couple of interesting British links: Paul Diamond and Andrea Williams of Christian Concern have attended TFC events, and Diamond recently announced that Christian Concern would be “coordinating their legal efforts” with the TFC. The TFC also supports the English Defence League, and the TFC’s Andy Miller calls Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) and Paul Weston “Friends of Mine”. These links are discussed here.

Boykin is well-known for his anti-Islam views (in 2010 he led an event in Texas alongside Walid Shoebat and Robert Spencer), and for his claim that economic difficulties in the USA are a conspiracy enacted by George Soros so that Obama can use healthcare legislation to create “an army of brownshirts”. Boykin is closely associated with the neo-Pentecostal evangelist Rick Joyner, and with Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries and Oak Initiative.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of Boykin’s presentation is boilerplate: cultural jihad is “taking over our country”; media and politicians are acting in accordance with the “Muslim propaganda playbook”; Muslims are “implementing their plan”; the name “War on Terror” was a mistake because “terrorism is a tactic” while the real problem is “the theology of Islam” and “authoritative Islam”, and “the target is our constitution”.  Further, “our government is penetrated at every level”, while the Christian church is “compromising”. Boykin also cites the claim that “81 per cent” of mosques are extremist (I discussed the study from which this figure was derived here).

Meanwhile, Boykin is due to address the Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast in Ocean City, MD, on Thursday 26 January. People for the American Way and CAIR have issued statements asking the mayor to reconsider, and PFAW has also disseminated a statement from Rev. Dr. Katharine Henderson, President of Auburn Theological Seminary.

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Seems to be working… (from 2009)

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A story from Iain Dale:

Just after the train left London Bridge a drunken woman got on my carriage and asked me to move the bag off the seat next to me. I asked her politely to sit in the seat opposite as I had no wish to sit next to a drunk in case she puked on me. An entirely reasonable thing to do in the circumstances. She then continued to act in a drunken manner, albeit not so legless that she wasn’t aware what she was doing. I started tweeting about the experience. Again, she then tried to sit next to me. I’m afraid I told her in no uncertain terms to ‘piss off’. She went back to the other seat. Someone then said: “Take a picture of her”. And this is where it started. Perhaps unwisely I did so and posted the picture on twitter along with the comment that I found her to be a “disgusting slapper”.

…Where I come from in Essex it’s not a word which by definition means a woman of loose sexual morals. Indeed it can mean that, but most people I know also use it in a different sense too. According to the Oxford English Dictionary its roots lie in the East End and derive from the Yiddish word Shlepper. According to the OED it means unkempt, scruffy person; gossipy, dowdy. And anyone looking at the picture would have to agree that she confirmed to that description. I pointed this out but my detractors preferred the definition from the Urban Dictionary (whatever that is) which equates it to slut and slag. Clearly the Oxford English Dictionary isn’t good enough for them. It’s a word I use quite a lot in various contexts. I even greeted a male MP with the phrase “hello you old slapper”, the other day.

I have full on-line access to the OED through my local public library, so I took a look for myself. Dale’s use of the OED here is self-serving, selective, and distorted.

The OED lists four definitions: the first three are (1) “a large thing or object” (Northamptsonshire dialect); (2) “one who slaps”; and (3) “an implement used for slapping with”. Sense 1 is applied “frequently to over-grown females” (based on an 1854 source), but this doesn’t apply to Dale’s usage, and so we turn turn to the fourth definition, which was added to the OED as a “draft definition” in 2002:

Brit. slang (derogatory). A promiscuous woman. Freq. in old slapper.

The first citation for this meaning comes from the Guardian in 1988 (although in that quote the exact meaning is unclear), and the second is taken from the 1990 Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang:

Slapper in British, a prostitute or slut. This working class term from East London and Essex is probably a corruption of shlepper or schlepper, a word of Yiddish origin, one of whose meanings is a slovenly or immoral woman.

However, the OED itself is not sure about the Bloomsbury Dictionary‘s claim:

See quot… for a postulated connection with Yiddish schlepper ‘unkempt, scruffy person; gossipy, dowdy woman’; however there is some gap in sense.

In other words, the OED does not endorse the Yiddish etymology, and there is no history of the word being used in a disapproving away that is not also sexualised. Those who went to the Urban Dictionary were not misled.

Perhaps the above is worth bearing in mind the next time Dale reports on something; case in point here.

Footnote: The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang is by Tony Thorne, who is also the author of The 100 Words that Make the English. In this 2009 book, he mentions “slapper” as part of his discussion of “slag”, and he suggests that the word “may be of Irish or Yiddish origin”.

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From the Guardian, yesterday:

Fridays are the day when private members’ bills are heard in the House of Commons and bills not sponsored by the government have a chance of becoming law. Today… Tory MP Nadine Dorries’s sex education (required content) bill is receiving its second reading.

Dorries’s bill proposes that girls aged between 13 and 16 are given sex education that includes information and advice on “the benefits of abstinence from sexual activity”.

Later:

Nadine Dorries’s sex education bill has been removed from today’s order paper – meaning it will not now be debated today, the Commons information office have confirmed to me.

It may be debated another day, but for now it has been “removed from effective orders”, a spokeswoman told me.

…The bill is likely to have been withdrawn by Dorries herself. “No one would be able to remove a private members’ bill without the permission of a member.”

…No one at Dorries’s office is yet able to explain why she has withdrawn the bill.

…My colleague Jessica Shepherd just got through to Dorries – but the MP said she “didn’t have time to talk”.

At least Shepherd got a civil response; according to the Huffington Post,

The bill was dropped from the order of business list for parliament on Friday, but Dorries’ office insisted the bill had not been withdrawn permanently.

“As the bill was so low down on the order paper, Nadine decided not to have hundreds of copies of the bill printed to save costs.”

Dorries herself refused to comment, hanging up the phone when Huffington Post UK attempted to contact her.

However, Andy McSmith at Independent Diary eventually managed to secure a quote:

She tells me: “The Bill is still live, but there was more chance of being struck by a meteor than getting it debated, so we told the Commons office not to bother printing a hard copy. What I didn’t realise was that if you don’t order it to be printed, it automatically comes off the agenda.

“Of course I wouldn’t withdraw it … a lot of people had paid train fares to come and protest. It would have been churlish.”

Dorries has made a few uninformative comments about the matter on her newly-revived Twitter feed, although she hasn’t posted anything to her blog (she announced early in December that “I will very shortly be closing my blog down and using wider outlets for comment”, although she has made made a few postings since).

The Bill could perhaps have avoided provoking a hostile response had the language been a bit different and had it been proposed by someone other than Dorries. As I wrote in May,  it seems sensible that in teaching young people how to navigate the sexual world, educators ought to include advice on how to resist media messages and peer pressure, and perhaps to raise awareness of saying no as an option. The special focus on girls can also be defended, given that biology means that girls suffer disproportionately when things go wrong, and that girls are more likely to have to deal with pressurizing or unwelcome requests for sex. It should be noted that the Bill does not commend the “abstinence only” position, along lines seen in parts of the USA and parts of Africa.

However, Dorries’ record of misrepresentation on a number of matters makes it very difficult to accept that anything she does is in good faith. Speaking on the Vanessa Show on 16 May, Dorries stated that she didn’t like the word “abstinence” in the Bill, but that she had been obliged to use it in Parliament as a piece of “legalese”. This seemed to me rather odd: what “legalese” requirement would this be? And why didn’t she make clear what expression she would have preferred instead? Further, what educational materials are there on “the benefits of abstinence”, besides those published by conservative Christian educators? (It should be remembered here that in 2010 Dorries misrepresented a Christian group opposing abortion as “neither pro-life nor pro-choice”) And if she only wants extra information to be provided, why did her pitch for the Bill at its First Reading include factually-inaccurate attacks on sex education?

I personally wouldn’t have gone along to a protest against the Bill (and some of the attacks, such as Chris Bryant’s “daftest piece of legislation” comment, have been excessive), but given that Dorries receives support and talking-points from conservative Christian groups, it is reasonable to be concerned about what kind of outcome Dorries’ Bill is strategically working towards.

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From CNN:

Aboard the USS Yorktown Tuesday morning, South Carolina State Senator Larry Grooms made his political defection official by announcing his endorsement of Rick Santorum.

…Although Grooms introduced Santorum to the crowd of reporters gathered for the press conference, he quietly joined the former senator on stage at the town hall that followed, leaving the introduction duties to retired General Jerry Boykin. 

A picture here shows Santorum

aboard the USS Yorktown, Tuesday in Mount Pleasant. Santorum’s national security advisor, Bill Connor, Lt. Gen. William Boykin and S.C. State Sen. Larry Grooms look on.

Boykin is well-known for his anti-Islam views (in 2010 he led an event in Texas alongside Walid Shoebat and Robert Spencer), and for his claim that economic difficulties in the USA are a conspiracy enacted by George Soros so that Obama can use healthcare legislation to create “an army of brownshirts”. Boykin is closely associated with the neo-Pentecostal evangelist Rick Joyner, and with Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries and Oak Initiative.

Boykin and Joyner are also involved in a chivalric group, called the Order of Saint John (or “The Knights of Malta: The Ecumenical Order”); Joyner is “Deputy Member of the Supreme Council”, while Boykin is the “Grand Chancellor”. Back in October, Boykin was present at a ceremony in Rhodes in which Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was inducted into the Order by the “Grand Master”, Nicholas Papanicolaou. In September 2010, Boykin and Papanicolaou published a letter on behalf of the order which attacked Obama for employing Muslims in security roles:

The Obama Administration’s Department of Homeland Security recently swore in two devout Muslims in senior posts…. Was it not “Devout Muslim men” that flew planes into U.S. buildings 9 years ago? Was it not a Devout Muslim who killed 14 at Fort Hood?

Boykin formerly supported Rick Perry for President; in August he related how Perry had spoken privately with a group of evangelical leaders:

He said, “I’m doing this because I know this is what the Bible calls me [to do?]: ‘If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves in prayer’”, and that’s what the Bible says. And Rick Perry very humbly stood before a group of us and said, “I’m doing this because it’s what God wants us to do. It’s not a political ploy.”

Meanwhile, a number of other Christian Right big hitters are supporting Newt Gingrich.

UPDATE: I see that Boykin is following the lead of conservative thriller author Brad Thor, who introduced Santorum in Sioux City, Iowa. The Washington Post reported at the beginning of the year:

“How many people cry when they’re introducing someone?” Brad Thor, the popular thriller-author-turned-conservative-commentator, asked a crowd of more than 200 after his voice cracked while introducing Santorum at the Daily Grind coffee shop here. He joked that he’d done damage to his “tough-guy, conservative author cred,” then cracked: “I’m just glad this isn’t on national television.”

In mid-2010, Thor described this blog as representing “the utter nihilism of the left” after I expressed some qualified scepticism over his “Mullah Omar captured” story.

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From a  press release:

The human rights organizations Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) are joining together to create a new global force determined to defend free societies globally: Stop Islamization of Nations (SION).

At the helm of SION as its founding President is the internationally renowned human rights activist and Executive Director of SIOA, Pamela Geller… Vice President is the acclaimed bestselling author and Islam expert, Robert Spencer.

The confirmed list of Board of Advisors for SION currently includes Dr. Ali Sina, the renowned ex-Muslim author and founder of FaithFreedom.org; Dr. Wafa Sultan, the ex-Muslim human rights activist and author; the German pro-freedom activist Stefan Herre of Politically Incorrect; the Israeli author Dr. Mordechai Kedar; the Hindu human rights activist Babu Suseelan; and Anders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE). More prominent pro-freedom activists will be added to the Board shortly.

This is not the first time that Geller has announced a new umbrella organization for the various “Stop Islamization” groups: back in November 2010 she announced a ”Global Freedom Initiative”* along much the same lines, promising

a huge conference in DC early next year, and will follow up with our teams in Europe, Asia, Latin America, China, and the Middle East in the Spring.

That never amounted to much, and a “transatlantic summit” was cancelled in July. This time, however, we’re assured that

A worldwide summit of SION freedom activists is currently being organized; location, date and other details will be announced in the coming weeks

In the meantime, SION apparently has a piece of paper containing a list of names:

…Immediate SION actions will include publicizing the names of politicians, academics, journalists, artists and their networks that promote the Islamization of Western policy and culture.

The press release also tries to grab journalistic attention with a stunt announcement:

…SION also offers diversity and sensitivity training to corporations and government agencies at the local, state and national levels. This diversity training is designed to help these entities understand the jihad threat in all its different manifestations, including Islamic supremacist cultural initiatives to assert Islamic law and practice in the American workplace. It helps them protect their business practices in the face of demands for special accommodation for Muslim employees.

Geller’s “Board of Advisors” consist of the usual characters: Ali Sina “exposes Islam as a totalitarian political movement in the guise of religion and a threat to human civilization”, while Wafa Sultan is the author of A God Who Hates: The Courageous Woman Who Inflamed the Muslim World Speaks Out Against the Evils of Radical Islam. I blogged on Stefan Herre here - he is a former sports teacher, and there was controversy in 2008 when his website took advertising from the Jewish Task Force (as reported in Der Speigel here). Kedar is an academic collaborator with Geller’s lawyer David Yerushalmi; I blogged on their “Sharia and Violence in American Mosques” article here.

Babu Suseelan, meanwhile, spoke at Geller’s 2010 anti-New York mosque protest, where he warned that “the purpose of the construction of an Islamic barracks in the heart of America is to train jihadis, perhaps violent as well as non-violent, for the next phase of the Islamic invasion of America.”

However, Muslims are the the top of a very long list in Suseelan’s mind; in a typically overheated rant elsewhere, he rails against

Radical Muslims, conversion mafia, missionary misfits, Marxist criminals, bogus secular leaders and the corrupt congress party…  Anarchists, Maoists, Naxals, vagabonds, miscreants, counterfeiters, and subversive groups… 

Suseelan explains that Christian missionaries “are devising various modern deceptive plans to convert unsuspecting and ignorant Hindus”, and he is critical of Christianity in principle:

Islam and Christianity are religions of the book with a specific God, messenger, strict rules, prescription to follow, organizational hierarchy and dogmatic belief system. These are closed, dogmatic and fundamentalist and closed belief systems, which divide people between believers and non-believers.

…Hindus need to counter the growing trend among pseudo secularists and phony liberals to promote the false ideology “all religions are the same”. What we need is an informed mind to rationally conclude that religions of the books and Hindu Dharma are not complementary.

There are also “Hindu traitors” to worry about:

The nature of present destructive behavior of Hindu traitors, anti Hindu stance of pseudo secular and corrupt Hindu political leaders may resemble the past. Looking at more and more evidence of policies and programs against our eternal, sacred Vedic Dharma helps us to adequately explain the uniformity of destructive political behavior of Hindu traitors.

…In contemporary politics, most of our pseudo secular Congress party and regional political party leaders are subservient to Christians, Muslims and their political actions retard Hindu advancement. Hindus in general are servile or otherwise lacking a sense of pride in Vedic Dharma or spiritual tradition.

Unsurprisingly, his advice for the 2009 election was “Vote for BJP for a positive future”.

*UPDATE: There is a “European Freedom Initiative” which acts as an umbrella group for the English Defence League and  other “Defence Leagues”. Although Geller supports the EDL (after temporarily withdrawing her endorsement in June), she is probably keen to ensure that her “Stop Islamization” groups and the “Defence Leagues” remain distinct.

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The Latham-Matthews transcription of The Diary of Samuel Pepys was published between 1970 and 1983 and remains the standard edition. It consists of 11 volumes, including an “Index” and a “Companion” volume, and virtually every day of Pepys’ record comes with one or more footnotes which guide the general reader and the scholar through the text. According to a review in the Times, as quoted on the covers of the modern paperback edition, the work “is one of the glories of contemporary English publishing”.

I first became aware of the scope of this edition a couple of years ago, when I was browsing in the gift shop at St Paul’s Cathedral. The complete set was laid out on display, in the interesting contemporary covers that were designed for a reissue of the year 2000. The books are published by HarperCollins, although the word “California” also appears on the spine, in reference to the University of California being the US publisher. I was impressed by the physical quality of the books, and I purchased the first volume soon after.

The same reissue edition is still available, although HarperCollins has now moved to a Print on Demand service. While Print on Demand is a great boon to publishing and to readers, in this instance the quality of a multi-volume collection has been compromised.

Three volumes are displayed above. On the left is Volume 1, 1660, as printed by the traditional printer. On the right are Volume 11 (the Index) and Volume 3 (1662) from the new Print on Demand printer.

The first problem is the Volume 3  is several millimetres narrower than Volume 11 – the Print on Demand service can’t even maintain uniformity of size with its own books, let alone match the traditionally printed volumes.

Second, the Print on Demand service uses too much glue. Both the Index and 1662 have the same problem here, creating a ridge and crease on the cover:

This is perhaps also why the book does not sit flat, unlike Volume 1 (click to see larger version of this):

Further, the colour of the paper is now different, and the first few pages of Volumes 3 and 11 tend to become “wavy” close to the spine (I’m sure printers have a proper word for that).

I asked HarperCollins about this, and I was told that

We take the quality of our print very seriously and ensure that our Editors are happy with this. These books have been through such a review by our Editorial team and they are happy with these [Print on Demand] versions.

So, that’s alright then.

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