31 July 2007 @ 12:01PM >> Over at the Indoctrinate U film website, we are starting to post some of the scenes we loved but ended up having to cut from the film.

The first deleted scene is called “Columbia Quiz.”

This less-than-five-minute video may prove embarrassing to the administration of Columbia University, which very clearly did not want me filming—unless I could convince them that my film would paper over the truth and make the university look good.

Sorry, Columbia!

27 July 2007 @ 9:12AM >> Over at the website for the film, you will find an update on Indoctrinate U and our plans to show the film publicly.

I am also happy to report that there are now 7 metropolitan areas that have over 500 screening requests, which is our threshold for arranging screenings in a particular area.

26 July 2007 @ 8:40PM >> The so-called John Doe amendment, which would prevent citizens from being sued for reporting suspicious activity to law enforcement officers and transit personnel, is apparently not dead yet.

After coming under heavy criticism when they first killed the provision, Congressional Democrats have wisely re-evaluated their position and will now allow the measure to come up for a vote. Let’s hope it passes, because if it doesn’t, you could wind up in court simply for voicing concerns about potential terrorist activity.

Currently, a number of people are having to defend themselves in court for doing just that.

The John Doe amendment would effectively end that court case and protect people who abide by the recommendation, “if you see something, say something.”

24 July 2007 @ 8:14AM >> Ryan Latimer of the pop culture website 411mania.com recently conducted an interview with me regarding the film Indoctrinate U and the state of America’s campuses. The interview can be read here.

23 July 2007 @ 8:13AM >> Political correctness in college classrooms is so pervasive that you can’t even avoid it in a computer programming class. In one such class at the University of California at Berkeley, students are asked to write a program that can play checkers. But students are told not to use the term “king,” which normally refers to a piece that has reached the opposite end of the board:

If a piece reaches the opposite side, it becomes an AAP (Additionally Abled Piece — actually, it’s called a “king”, but we decided to eschew sexist and monarchist nomenclature) and can move both backwards and forwards along the diagonals.

No, this isn’t a parody. This is what life is actually like in college these days.

(Hat tip: John J. Miller.)

20 July 2007 @ 8:58AM >> The Metropolitan Transportation Authority here in New York City runs commercials saying, “If you see something, say something,” asking the citizenry to report suspicious behavior that might indicate terrorist activity. But apparently, the Democrats in Congress would rather have you keep your mouth shut. Because of their actions, saying something could end up dragging you into court.

First, a little background:

As the plane boarded, she said, no one refused to fly. The public prayers and an Arabic phone call triggered no alarms.

But then a note from a passenger about suspicious movements of the imams got the crew’s attention.

To Pauline, everything seemed normal. Then the captain - in classic laconic pilot-style - announced there had been a “mix-up in our paperwork” and that the flight would be delayed.

In reality, the crew was waiting for the FBI and local police to arrive.

Contrary to press accounts that a single note from a passenger triggered the imams’ removal, Captain John Howard Wood was weighing multiple factors.

* An Arabic speaker was seated near two of the imams in the plane’s tail. That passenger pulled a flight attendant aside and, in a whisper, translated what the men were saying: invoking “bin Laden” and condemning America for “killing Saddam,” according to police reports.

* An imam seated in first class asked for a seat-belt extender - the extra strap that obese people use because the standard belt is too short. According to both an on-duty and a deadheading flight attendant, he looked too thin to need one.

A seat-belt extender can easily be used as a weapon - just wrap one end around your fist, and swing the heavy metal buckle.

* All six imams had boarded together, with the first-class passengers - even though only one of them had a first-class ticket. Three had one-way tickets. Between the six men, only one had checked a bag.

And, Pauline said, they spread out - just like the 9/11 hijackers. Two sat in first class, two in the middle and two back in the economy section, police reports show. Some, according to Rader, took seats not assigned to them.

* Finally, a gate attendant told the captain she was suspicious of the imams, according to police reports.

So the captain made his decision to delay the flight based on many complaints, not one. He also consulted a federal air marshal, a U.S. Airways ground-security coordinator and the airline’s security office in Phoenix. All thought the imams were acting suspiciously, Rader told me.

One more odd thing went unnoticed at the time: The men prayed both at the gate and on the plane. Yet observant Muslims pray only once at sundown, not twice.

“It was almost as if they were intentionally trying to get kicked off the flight,” Pauline said.

And now, the people who reported the suspicious behavior are being sued by the “flying imams” who were removed from the plane.

A bill that would have protected citizens from such suits just got killed by the Democrats in Congress.

Apparently, political correctness is more important than national security.

So remember, if you see something, shut up. Or else, you might just end up in court.

18 July 2007 @ 12:44PM >> American Journalism Review covers the professional fallout (or lack thereof) from the Duke non-rape case:

Michael B. Nifong—the district attorney who pursued Seligmann, Finnerty and teammate David Evans even as evidence of their innocence mounted and his case imploded—was held accountable for his actions. Hours after Seligmann testified, Nifong announced his intention to resign; the next day, he was disbarred.

The media incurred no such penalties. No loss of license, no disciplinary panels, no prolonged public humiliation for the reporters, columnists, cable TV pundits, editorial writers and editors who trumpeted the “Duke lacrosse rape case” and even the “gang-rape case” in front-page headlines, on the nightly news and on strident cable shoutfests.

Of course, Nifong had information and power the media did not. His failing in the case cannot be overstated, nor can it be equated to that of a throng of journalists and pundits, however odious some of their reporting and commentary. But the media deserve a public reckoning, too, a remonstrance for coverage that—albeit with admirable exceptions—all too eagerly embraced the inflammatory statements of a prosecutor in the midst of a tough election campaign. Fueled by Nifong, the media quickly latched onto a narrative too seductive to check: rich, wild, white jocks had brutalized a working class, black mother of two.

“It was too delicious a story,” says Daniel Okrent, a former New York Times public editor, who is critical of the Times’ coverage and that of many other news organizations. “It conformed too well to too many preconceived notions of too many in the press: white over black, rich over poor, athletes over non-athletes, men over women, educated over non-educated. Wow. That’s a package of sins that really fit the preconceptions of a lot of us.”

As with so many stories, lies that fit the media’s preconceptions were reported, while contradictory facts were ignored. It’s just another example of how a lack of intellectual diversity in the establishment press results in a shoddy product. It seems that too many media organizations don’t have anyone in the newsroom challenging the preconceptions that led to this journalistic fiasco.

In this case, the reputations of the accused were destroyed, and they will never be fully restored. The prosecutor’s malfeasance was amplified by reckless reporters who pushed an ideological storyline about race, class and gender. The prosecutor has been punished, but none of the reporters faced any consequences. They’re still employed, ready to distort the next story.

17 July 2007 @ 8:46AM >> BusinessWeek asks, “Which major American newspaper should be the first to throw up its hands and stop publishing a print product?”

This could be the worst year for newspapers since the Great Depression. The double-digit revenue declines long forecast by doomsters have arrived. While nearly all the major papers still post profits, albeit smaller than before, a few prominent ones are losing boatloads. At Hearst Newspapers’ San Francisco Chronicle, according to a deposition given by James M. Asher, the company’s chief legal and business development officer, losses of $330 million piled up between mid-2000 and September, 2006, better—or should I say worse?—than $1 million a week. During negotiations with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s unions, the owning Block family disclosed that the paper lost $20 million in 2006. Late last year, The Boston Globe was headed for unprofitability as well, according to The Wall Street Journal.

And 2007 does not look materially kinder than 2006 for any of these papers. One senior executive describes the climate like this: “If you told me 24 months ago that revenues would be declining as much as they are today, I’d say you were smoking dope.”

So, which paper should be the first to abandon print? Read the piece for the author’s opinion, which differs from mine.

16 July 2007 @ 1:55AM >> Maybe educational standards have increased since No Child Left Behind was signed into law. In Richmond, Virginia, one public school starts preparing kids for college before they’re even freshmen in high school:

Graduates from Richmond’s Binford Middle School get a diplomalike certificate, signed by the teacher and principal.

It is ringed by six graphic marks, including icons of a notebook, an apple, the school mascot and such.

Then there is a picture of a man. And who is this icon of American education?

Not John Dewey or Horace Mann, both of whom were called fathers of American education.

It’s not Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin or George Washington, either.

Nope. It isn’t any of those dead white male oppressors.

It’s...prepare to be shocked:

It’s Karl Marx!

Not exactly the father of education. This is the father of socialism. The father of communism.

15 July 2007 @ 7:11PM >> The times, they are a-changin’:

Britain’s World War II prime minister Winston Churchill has been cut from a list of key historical figures recommended for teaching in English secondary schools, a government agency says.

The radical overhaul of the school curriculum for 11- to 14-year-olds is designed to bring secondary education up to date and allow teachers more flexibility in the subjects they teach, the Government said.

But although Adolf Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Joseph Stalin and Martin Luther King have also been dropped from the detailed guidance accompanying the curriculum, Sir Winston’s exclusion is likely to leave traditionalists aghast.

[...]

“If you’re surprised that people do not seem to care that much about the country in which they live, the reason is that they don’t know much about it.”

The History Curriculum Association said it was “appalled” by the move, saying the new curriculum would “promote ignorance” and was pandering to a politically-correct agenda.

[...]

Schools Secretary Ed Balls defended the move, saying a slimmed-down curriculum was overdue and traditional elements in all subjects had been protected.

Among the few named figures that stay in the new history curriculum are William Wilberforce, the British law maker who was instrumental in efforts to abolish the slave trade.

11 July 2007 @ 7:11AM >> A new Zogby poll indicates that Americans are becoming aware of the problem of political bias in academia. Saying that “a majority of Americans believe the political bias of college professors is a serious problem,” the poll adds that a full 39% consider the problem to be “very serious.”

10 July 2007 @ 11:43PM >> Philadelphia’s indie paper The Bulletin ran a piece on my film Indoctrinate U today. The article describes several of the cases mentioned in the film.

10 July 2007 @ 8:48AM >> A film industry insider discusses what’s wrong with Hollywood today and relays a telling anecdote:

Not long ago I developed the story of a West Point cadet whose fireman father had been killed on 9-11. This was the same family President Bush praised in his 2006 West Point graduation speech. It was a service family -– a fire officer father who’d given his life, a soldier son, the soldier’s brother, himself an aspiring fireman, and a mother who’d been teaching school the day her husband was killed.

I called a well-placed Hollywood power broker to get the project launched. I told him the story, and pictured the family, rightly, as the best America has. There was a long pause. Then he blurted out, “Wait a minute! Those are the people who elected BUSH!”

Maybe if the powers in Hollywood remembered that not everyone votes or thinks like they do, they’ll be able to find an audience beyond what they’re reaching now.

9 July 2007 @ 8:20AM >> Librarians aren’t just librarians anymore. Now they’re political activists:

Librarians? Aren’t they supposed to be bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons — the ultimate humorless shushers?

Not any more. With so much of the job involving technology and with a focus now on finding and sharing information beyond just what is available in books, a new type of librarian is emerging — the kind that, according to the Web site Librarian Avengers, is “looking to put the ‘hep cat’ in cataloguing.”

[...]

“I think we’re getting more progressive and hipper,” said Carrie Ansell, a 28-year-old law librarian in Washington.

[...]

Michelle Campbell, 26, a librarian in Washington, said that librarianship is a haven for left-wing social engagement, which is particularly appealing to the young librarians she knows. “Especially those of us who graduated around the same time as the Patriot Act,” Ms. Campbell said. “We see what happens when information is restricted.”

So, to the New York Times, left-wing social activism equals cool. That’s about what I would expect from the Times.

But I wonder if the reporter bothered posing a follow-up question to the liberal librarians: what book, exactly, did the Patriot Act ban? What information was restricted?

4 July 2007 @ 12:09AM >> It can be tough for a left-thinking American to get any respect in Tehran.

You can speak out against the United States until you’re blue in the face, and you still get treated like a dirty infidel.

Can’t they see that you’re not some stupid flag-waving, Bible-thumping, Bush-voting, buck-toothed hick? Can’t they see that you’re a jet-setting artist, a sophisticated post-national citizen of the world, a member of the intelligentsia who always recycles, and that you want nothing more than to bring world peace by connecting cultures through the magic of film?

These sorts of questions may be floating around in the mind of Oliver Stone, now that he won’t be making a film about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A spokesman for the Iranian president “said that Stone had requested to make a film about Ahmadinejad”:

“We have already seen his documentaries - even though Stone is considered a member of the opposition group in the US, it is still part of the Great Satan,” he said.

Despite his ties to the Great Satan, “Stone is regarded within cinema circles in Islamic Iran as a distinguished filmmaker.”

But I guess Stone’s exalted status in Iran was not enough to overcome his most fundamental flaw.

No matter how great his talent, no matter where his political sympathies lie, he’s still nothing more than an infidel.

And these days, that’s a crime punishable by death.

3 July 2007 @ 11:34AM >> A former British Jihadist:

[W]hat drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal?

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn’t enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

[...]

For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: “Are you British or Muslim?”

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don’t want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

[...]

Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.

I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.

Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.

2 July 2007 @ 11:58PM >> A student at Georgia Tech reports that the school has officially endorsed Barack Obama for president. At least that’s how an e-mail from the Dean’s office makes it sound:

In the email message sent through the Buzzport announcement system, usually reserved for official Institute business, all 17,000 Georgia Tech students were informed about Obama’s visit and solicited to volunteer for his campaign. The message stated:

Senator Obama is also in need of a lot of volunteers to help him publicize while he is in Atlanta. If you are interested in volunteering you can check the box that says volunteers on the RSVP page.

Volunteers will be needed for Wednesday (street publicity team),

Thursday (sign making party) and Saturday (helping with the actual event) you can also reply to this message if you’d like to volunteer.

The taxpayers of Georgia may want to ask themselves why they are paying for officials of a public university to recruit volunteers for a political campaign.