26 March 2009 @ 9:03AM >> Thanks to everyone who came to the Indoctrinate U screening at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival on Tuesday evening! It turned out to be quite a success, and undoubtedly, the festival organizers noticed the crowded theater and enthusiastic audience.

It was nice to meet a number of folks I knew only online, and thanks to the wonders of Facebook (yes, you can find me there), there was at least one member of the audience who I haven’t seen since 6th grade at P.S. 158.

Thanks also to everyone who bought me Black-and-Tans at the Telephone Bar afterwards, although it required me to ingest a couple extra doses of coffee the next day at work.

I was pretty surprised to get selected for this film festival. We haven’t had much luck on the festival circuit; the film industry isn’t much different from academia as far as groupthink goes. But because we had such a great showing, I’m sure that people in the business took note. So thanks again for the support!

P.S. Sorry for the late start on the film—I wasn’t aware that a half-hour short film was going to be shown before Indoctrinate U.

27 February 2009 @ 8:27AM >> Last week, I covered the Borders bookstore in Dallas which appeared to have a display of various Barack Obama items under a “Religion” sign in the children’s section.

It turns out those pictures were authentic, as Borders has now admitted.

After seeing the photos, reader T. Williams contacted Borders, and he forwarded their response to me. I followed up by contacting Borders and verifying their e-mail, which they acknowledged:

Dear Evan,

Thank you for contacting Borders.

That email in fact did come from Borders.com, I have forwarded a copy to you.

First, let me underscore that Borders is politically neutral—we take no political stand whatsoever and remain committed to providing our customers with a deep selection of titles that appeal to a wide range of views, tastes and interests. We stand by our customers right to choose what to read and what to buy.

We have no displays in our stores nationwide featuring books about Barack Obama under the heading of Religion in our Childrens sections or anywhere else. What is captured here in the photo is a simple display error made by one store and one store only. In this particular location, the staff expanded the display of childrens books in the category of History and Social Studies horizontally across two display areas and simply did not realize that they had left the Religion category sign up above the newly expanded display, which happened to feature titles related to President Barack Obama. Once alerted to this error, the store promptly removed the Religion category sign. This was a simple oversight and is no way indicative of any political slant on the part of Borders nationwide or even in this particular store. I am sure now that you are aware of the facts, you will agree that it is misleading to continue to circulate this photo and state that it is indicative of a political stance or campaign on our partthat just isnt so. It is my hope that you’ll come back and visit us again soon at your local store and see for yourself.

Sincerely,

RobT
Borders Customer Care
www.Borders.com

15 April 2008 >> The only thing that can be more gratifying to a filmmaker than having a packed house is having the house packed with a lively audience that responds enthusiastically.

Thanks to everyone who made it to last night’s New York City premiere of Indoctrinate U.

It was truly a special night, and it makes me all the more certain that the only thing standing in the way of massive success for Indoctrinate U is making sure that enough people get a chance to hear about the film.

If you haven’t been able to see Indoctrinate U in your area, you can now download the film and order DVDs from the Indoctrinate U store.

11 April 2008 @ 9:16AM >> In an apparent change of corporate policy, Starbucks is being a little more laissez faire about what it allows to be printed on its customizable Starbucks cards.

After the Wall Street Journal ran a piece on Monday in which Starbucks was accused of repeatedly rejecting the phrase laissez faire—apparently for violating an unspecified part of company policy—the story was covered widely online.

So, as a public service to you the reader, I decided to place my own order for a laissez faire Starbucks card. Perhaps as a result of the negative publicity, Starbucks is now allowing the phrase. My card, shown here, arrived yesterday.

31 January 2008 @ 9:10AM >> The Indoctrinate U screening at Duke went quite well, and the group that organized the event has posted a reaction on their blog:

Last night’s screening of Indoctrinate U was fantastic! The film was insightful, provocative and often hilarious. The Duke Chronicle reported the event in today’s issue, though with a few significant mistakes and a somewhat unfortunate title. DSEDuke sponsored the film, with contributions from the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace and the Political Science department. A discussion afterwards was co-sponsored and promoted by the Duke Conservative Union, College Republicans, Duke Democrats, and the Center for Race Relations.

If any reviews of the Louisiana State screening become available online, I’ll post that link as well.

25 January 2008 @ 9:17AM >> Good news! Next Tuesday’s screening of Indoctrinate U at Duke University is now open to the public.

Also, we’ve just announced a screening at Indiana University School of Law on February 25th.

Other upcoming screenings: Louisiana State University (Shreveport) on January 29th; San Diego State University on February 13th; and Ottawa, Ontario (Canada) on February 18th. Many more to come.

And finally, plans should be announced shortly for screenings at my alma mater—Bucknell University—and Washington & Lee.

Last time I visited Bucknell for a screening of my work, the school’s head of security threatened me with arrest—in front of the audience gathered to watch my film.

Hopefully things will go a little more smoothly this time.

30 December 2007 @ 3:35PM >> Assuming the last few details get worked out in time, sometime in January, Indoctrinate U will be offered as a web download. At some point after that, DVD sales will begin as well.

Prices have not yet been set for either the download or the DVD. More details will follow when they become available.

In the meantime, happy New Year!

11 December 2007 @ 5:49PM >> Perhaps due to the relative speeds of e-mail and snail mail, I wasn’t aware of this until reading James Taranto’s column today (scroll down), but apparently Indiana University has dropped their demand that On The Fence Films hand over what remains in our depleted coffers. In other words, it looks like they’ve backed off their threatened legal action.

Thanks to Indiana University for resolving the matter so quickly after it became public. We acted in good faith, and we appreciate that it was reciprocated.

Update: A statement has been posted on the Indoctrinate U website, which reads in part:

Being employed by a school with an endowment of over $1 billion might give him a different financial perspective, because Mr. MacIntyre refers to the amount of money the school was demanding ($1,500) with a dismissive “That’s it.”

For an independent production company like ours, that small amount of money is the difference between making the final payment to our sound engineers and producing promotional DVDs. Being bankrupted by a bogus demand didn’t seem inconsequential to us.

Nevertheless, we are of the philosophy that all’s well that ends well. And in the end, we’re happy with Indiana University’s final decision.

Given the experiences we had with other college administrators, the folks at Indiana have been among the better ones to deal with.

Indeed that’s true. Thanks to Mr. MacIntyre (and everyone else involved at Indiana University) for helping bring this matter to a speedy and amicable resolution.

7 December 2007 >> As promised, the Indoctrinate U website came back online last week, and we’ve now posted a statement explaining why the site was taken down in the first place.

James Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today” covers the story.

Sorry for any inconvenience, and thanks a lot for all the supportive e-mails. It’s good to be back!

29 November 2007 >> Last week, I linked to a Denver Post story detailing the ordeal of Don and Susie Kirlin, a Boulder couple who’ve been living in the city for 27 years. The Kirlins recently had a substantial chunk of their land taken away from them by the legal maneuverings of their well-connected politician neighbors, Richard McLean and wife Edith Stevens. You see, McLean and Stevens wanted that land for themselves. And thanks to a friendly judge and an obscure legal doctrine called “adverse possession,” they were able to seize the land from the Kirlins.

A reader wrote in with a little more background about this case:

Evan,

Just some notes I found while poking around on the internet about this case. I don’t know anyone involved, everything I know came from Google searches. It just infuriates me that someone could do this.

1) The Kirlins claim that they have satellite photos proving that the paths that McLean “developed” didn’t exist until a year ago.

2) Edith Stevens is a former Chairwoman of the Boulder Democratic Party and is still active in local politics. In fact, one of the claims that she uses to justify the land grab is that she used the land to stage political fundraisers. I’d be interested to find out which politicians benefited from her land grab.

[Link]

Edith Stevens has resigned as campaign treasurer for State House Representative Claire Levy (Democrat).

[Link]

3) Levy appears to be yet another trial lawyer turned politician. From her website:

[Link]

“I also worked with legislators on bills related to local government land use authority. Our goal was to retain flexibility for local governments to address their unique problems during a time when the state legislature wanted to take tools away from local government in favor of developers.”

Presumably Don and Susie Kirlin, in this case, are the developers. They’re a family trying to build their dream home. “Local government” in this case are the courts and politicians. This isn’t eminent domain or overzealous land use regulation, but it’s all part of the same picture— usurping property rights in the name of “public good”. After all, where would we hold our democratic fundraisers if Don and Susie build their house?

4) Two points seem to be getting lost in the comment threads on the sites I’m reading. First, this is NOT an open and shut case. Apparently, the Kirlins claim to have convincing evidence that key facts were misrepresented (that is, aerial photography disputing when the footpaths were created). Second, over and above the legal question is the ethical question. The Kirlins aren’t 17th century English barons, fencing off the commons and evicting the commoners. They’re neighbors. McLean and Stevens might win in the courts—in fact with their political clout it seems likely they will—but that doesn’t make taking what isn’t theirs morally right.

Rob in Atlanta

31 October 2007 @ 8:08AM >> This, in a nutshell, demonstrates everything that is wrong with academia today:

The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech.

“The University of Delaware’s residence life education program is a grave intrusion into students’ private beliefs,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “The university has decided that it is not enough to expose its students to the values it considers important; instead, it must coerce its students into accepting those values as their own. At a public university like Delaware, this is both unconscionable and unconstitutional.”

The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

The university suggests that at one-on-one sessions with students, RAs should ask intrusive personal questions such as “When did you discover your sexual identity?” Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” one-on-one session was a young woman who stated that she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat.”

According to the program’s materials, the goal of the residence life education program is for students in the university’s residence halls to achieve certain “competencies” that the university has decreed its students must develop in order to achieve the overall educational goal of “citizenship.” These competencies include: “Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society,” “Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression,” and “Students will be able to utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and consumer mentality.”

At various points in the program, students are also pressured or even required to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university’s ideology, regardless of their personal beliefs. Such actions include displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an “oppressed” social group, and taking action by advocating for a “sustainable world.”

In the Office of Residence Life’s internal materials, these programs are described using the harrowing language of ideological reeducation. In documents relating to the assessment of student learning, for example, the residence hall lesson plans are referred to as “treatments.”

The taxpayers of Delaware should demand that the folks running the state’s university get put into a treatment program of their own.

Update: The University of Delaware has agreed to dismantle this very troubling program. But these things have a way of resurfacing under new guises, so I hope the students and RAs at the University of Delaware will be vigilant about watching the school’s future actions, especially now that it appears RAs who spoke out against the program are being threatened with retribution.

27 September 2007 >> I am happy to report that the public premiere of Indoctrinate U has sold out. Thanks to everyone who supported this project by sending well-wishes, by telling friends, and by writing about it.

And thanks especially to everyone who bought tickets—I’ll see you Friday night at the Kennedy Center!

12 September 2007 >> In the course of defending myself against accusations of quote doctoring, a reader discovered that MSNBC silently changed a quote in an article about journalists’ contributions to political causes.

A few days ago, I was criticized by a reader for allegedly removing an important part of a quote. The reader said I was “bad for democracy” and that I “should be ashamed of [myself].”

I replied that the quote I cited in my post appeared that way in the article at the time I wrote my post. My only defense was that I copied and pasted the text out of the article and did not change it. But the text that the reader cited did differ from mine, and I could not prove that the text had changed since my post appeared. MSNBC had apparently changed the quote without mentioning the change, even though the article does list another correction.

Yesterday, another reader did a bit of forensic websurfing and found proof that I was not lying:

Hi Evan,

The reason that the internet is so great is that information is rarely ever lost. It’s there if you know where to look. You can, for example, use the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.

If you use it to search for the URL of the MSNBC article <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485/> you come to this page:
<http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19113485/>

It seems that the page has been updated only twice. Once on June 25th, when it was created, and once on June 26th. The June 25th version has the Mark Singer quote exactly as you posted it. But then it’s changed in the June 26th version. And, oddly enough, this change is not included with the other correction noted.

Hope this was helpful!

Best Regards,

[Name withheld]

As happy as I am to be vindicated, I do think it’s odd that MSNBC added to Mr. Singer’s quote apparently to take some of the sting out of it. Especially when the network obviously has a policy of noting corrections—after all, they posted a different correction notice to the very same article.

So what led to the change in Mr. Singer’s quote? Did he demand it? Or did someone at MSNBC just think he needed to be softened up a bit?

Inquiring minds want to know!

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 >> 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.”

30 March 2007 @ 1:46PM >> It’s official: just as I suspected, a student mob that stormed the stage and shut down a speech sponsored by the College Republicans has emerged victorious, earning what Columbia’s student newspaper calls “a slap on the wrist.”

It’s yet another defeat for free thought and free speech on college campuses. The university has given a wink and a nod to the heckler’s veto, and left-wing students at Columbia now know that they can shut down any speaker with which they disagree and get away with it.

Way to go, Columbia!

10 February 2007 @ 5:58PM >> A reader points out that the tax disparity I highlighted in yesterday’s Two Americas post may be more severe than I indicated:

Hi Evan,

I think you understate the problem. You say “Yet today, 14 million Americans are receiving representation without paying any taxes, while 50% of the population pays 97% of the taxes. That means there are 14 million free-riders who have a vote that enables them to call for taxes to be raised on everyone else.” But the article says “about 14 million Americans at lower incomes have been removed from the federal income tax rolls since 2000“.

TaxProf’s Blog gave the percentages a couple years ago: 25.2% of filers reported zero tax liability in 2000, compared to 32.4% in 2004. The underlying report reveals the raw number of the untaxed grew nearly 10 million (from 32.5 million to 42.5 million) in those 4 years. I can’t find the latest numbers, but it’s certainly conceivable that 4 million more free-riders were added in 2005 and 2006. And this is just the number of tax returns filed, not the number of Americans. The report goes on to say “roughly 15 million individuals and families earned some income last year but not enough to be required to file a tax return.... Even 57.5 million is not the actual number of people because one tax return often represents several people. When all of the dependents of these income-producing people are counted, roughly 120 million Americans – 40 percent of the U.S. population – are outside of the federal income tax system.”

To be fair, however, a study of tax liability and propensity to vote is warranted if you’re going to claim tyranny of the majority. The study concludes by breaking down the numbers by several demographics, but “likely voters” isn’t one of them.

Cheers,
Bill

Thanks for the careful reading of the original report, Bill. It seems clear that I did understate the problem.

21 January 2007 >> At the end of last year, I wrote about the elusive Jamil Hussein, a supposed Iraqi police captain quoted in at least 61 stories by the Associated Press. A number of bloggers digging into the story started expressing skepticism about Hussein after various governmental instutitions in Iraq found no one with that name working in the police force. AP has since admitted that the name attributed in their stories was in fact a pseudonym, even though no such acknowledgement was ever made in the many stories in which he was quoted.

Recently, Michelle Malkin went to Iraq to investigate the story that led to the questions surrounding Jamil Hussein. Her report, published in the New York Post, indicates that AP’s troubles go far beyond the true name of Jamil Hussein:

[O]ne story [Jamil Hussein] told the AP just doesn’t check out: The Sunni mosques that as Hussein claimed and AP reported as “destroyed,” “torched” and “burned and [blown] up” are all still standing. So the credibility of every AP story relying on Jamil Hussein remains dubious.

Let’s take it from the beginning.

When the AP ran its headline-grabbing and horrifying account of alleged atrocities in Baghdad last Thanksgiving, its main source was an Iraqi police captain, one Jamil Hussein.

[...]

AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll indignantly attacked those who had questioned the global news organization’s reporting: “I never quite understood why people chose to disbelieve us about this particular man on this particular story,” she told Editor and Publisher. “AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories about things that have happened in Iraq.”

Well, Bryan Preston and I visited the area during our Iraq trip last week. Several mosques did, in fact, come under attack by Mahdi Army forces. But the “destroyed” mosques all still stand. Iraqi and U.S. Army officials say that two of them received no fire damage whatsoever. Another, which we filmed, was abandoned and empty when it was attacked.

We obtained summary reports and photos filed at the time by Iraqi and U.S. Army troops on the scene. They contain no corroborating evidence of Hussein’s claim that “Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene.”

One of the mosques identified by the AP, the Nidaa Alah mosque, had been abandoned and vacant at the time it was hit with small-arms fire, say Iraqi and U.S. Army officials. Two of its inside rooms were burned out by a lobbed firebomb, according to an Army report.

Three other mosques in the area - the al Muhaymin, al Mushahiba and Ahbab Mustafa mosques - sustained small-arms fire damage to their exteriors; the Mustafa mosque also had two rooms burned out by a firebomb.

Contrary to Hussein and the AP’s account, military reports note that Iraqi Army battalion members were on the scene - pursuing attackers, securing the area, calling the fire department, providing support and an outer cordon.

Neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post was able to confirm AP’s story.

The AP quoted one corroborating witness, Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriya, who “confirmed Hussein’s account” of the immolated Sunnis on Al-Arabiya television. When Al-Hasimi later recanted, AP implied that it was due to pressure from Iraqi government officials. The other possibility: He recanted because it wasn’t true.

Capt. Aaron Kaufman of Task Force Justice, which works closely with the Iraqi Army battalion that was on the scene and monitored events as they happened, told us: “It was blown way out of proportion, there was nobody lit on fire.”

Capt. Stacy Bare, the civil-affairs officer who took us on patrol in Hurriya, concurred: “There were no six Sunnis burned.”

---

Update: Michelle Malkin has posted a video report containing images of the still-standing mosques that were supposedly “destroyed.”

9 October 2006 >> If you set foot on a college campus these days, you’ll be bombarded with feel-good buzzwords intended to convince you of how caring and inclusive the environment is.

The words “tolerance” and “diversity” are drilled into students’ heads from orientation on, but it doesn’t take savvy students long to figure out just how empty those concepts are in academia these days.

The concept of diversity is only skin deep; everyone is welcomed regardless of color or sexual orientation—as long as they don’t deviate from the narrow ideological framework that dominates many college campuses. Diversity of thought—presumably the most important type of diversity in an institution whose purpose is to enrich the mind—is not valued. And tolerance never seems to extend to those who reject the worldview that schools attempt to impose.

Case in point, Columbia University:

Students stormed the stage at Columbia University’s Roone auditorium yesterday, knocking over chairs and tables and attacking Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the border between America and Mexico.

Mr. Gilchrist and Marvin Stewart, another member of his group, were in the process of giving a speech at the invitation of the Columbia College Republicans. They were escorted off the stage unharmed and exited the auditorium by a back door.

[...]

The student protesters, who attended the event clad in white as a sign of dissent, booed and shouted the speakers down throughout. They interrupted Mr. Stewart, who is African-American, when he referred to the Declaration of Independence’s self-evident truth that “All men are created equal,” calling him a racist, a sellout, and a black white supremacist.

A student’s demand that Mr. Stewart speak in Spanish elicited thundering applause and brought the protesters to their feet. The protesters remained standing, turned their backs on Mr. Stewart for the remainder of his remarks, and drowned him out by chanting, “Wrap it up, wrap it up!” Mr. Stewart appeared unfazed by their behavior. He simply smiled and bellowed, “No wonder you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“These are racist individuals heading a project that terrorizes immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border,” Ryan Fukumori, a Columbia junior who took part in the protest, told The New York Sun. “They have no right to be able to speak here.”

As of now, the Columbia administration has taken absolutely no disciplinary action launched an investigation.

If it infuriates you to read this, then you may want to be sure you’ve taken your medications before watching the video.

---

Update: Columbia University president Lee Bollinger released a statement on the incident, which I’ve excerpted:

The disruption on Wednesday night that resulted in the termination of an event organized by the Columbia College Republicans in Lerner Hall represents, in my judgment, one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur in a university such as ours.

Of course, the University is thoroughly investigating the incident, and it is critically important not to prejudge the outcome of that inquiry with respect to individuals. But, as we made clear in our University statements on both Wednesday night and Thursday, we must speak out to deplore a disruption that threatens the central principle to which we are institutionally dedicated, namely to respect the rights of others to express their views.

This is not complicated: Students and faculty have rights to invite speakers to the campus. Others have rights to hear them. Those who wish to protest have rights to do so. No one, however, shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers. This is a sacrosanct and inviolable principle.

It is unacceptable to seek to deprive another person of his or her right of expression through actions such as taking a stage and interrupting the speech. We rightly have a visceral rejection of this behavior, because we all sense how easy it is to slide from our collective commitment to the hard work of intellectual confrontation to the easy path of physical brutishness. When the latter happens, we know instinctively we are all threatened.

These are reassuring words. And I hope Mr. Bollinger intends to stand by them and see that the principles therein are enforced at Columbia. I’ll believe it when I see it, though; Columbia doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to these politically-charged investigations.

29 September 2006 @ 9:26AM >> Is Europe finally beginning to stand up against Jihadist intimidation? The controversy over a cancelled Mozart opera in Germany may be a turning point.

German chancellor some effect:

A controversial Mozart opera adapted to include a scene showing Mohammed’s severed head on stage appears set for a new run in Berlin after the German government said the show must go on as a “signal of closer dialogue” with the country’s 3.4m Muslims.

[...]

Badr Mohammed, head of Berlin’s European Integration Centre and one of the Muslim delegates to the conference, said the forum was a “historic breakthrough - an opportunity that Muslims must now grasp”.

[...]

Yet greater co-operation was already proving difficult on Wednesday night, as some of the representatives of Germany’s main Muslim organisations complained that the interior ministry had also invited independent Muslim experts to the forum, including women writers and lawyers who are highly critical of conservative Muslim traditions.

So it sounds like, although the current run of the show has been cancelled, it may be put on at some yet-to-be-determined time in the future.

We shall see. I’ve got a feeling this story isn’t over yet.

16 September 2006 @ 7:53PM >> According to Rocco DiPippo of a blog called The Autonomist, the story I covered in “The Taliban’s Free Pass” on Thursday may not be accurate. DiPippo contacted an official at the U.S. Military’s Central Command who said, “Normally cemeteries and other religious places and spaces would be areas where we would try to avoid given their religious and cultural sensitivity, but there is no blanket prohibition, circumstances always vary.”

The CENTCOM official, Major Matthew McLaughlin, said that the sensitivity to sites like cemeteries “was not the driving force behind the decision not to engage this target — inappropriate to say any more on the rationale.”

It is understandable that the military would like to avoid attacks in sites that would be perceived as culturally inflammatory, and it makes sense to treat such sites with greater caution. But it would border on military malpractice to let high-value targets elude us because of that alone. Although it sounds like that may not have happened in this case, Major McLaughlin implies that the military’s default position is to stand down whenever the enemy occupies certain hallowed ground. I’m sure members of the Taliban and al Qaeda are aware of this, and I’m sure they take advantage of it.

I would hope that the rules of engagement allow such decisions to be made quickly enough that they could be acted upon before the opportunity slips away. How many layers in the chain of command need to sign off on a strike in this type of situation? How much time could that process take? As a civilian, I’d be curious to know.

Because my current impression is that we’re still holding back against an enemy that sees our restraint as weakness. And I’m not sure they’re wrong. Sensitivity is not necessarily a helpful trait in war.

11 August 2006 @ 8:53AM >> The Quote of the Day, “Should’ve stayed on the weed,” is from Glenn Reynolds, in response to this tidbit about one of the people plotting yesterday’s thwarted terrorist attack:

Neighbors identified one of the suspects as Don Stewart-Whyte, 21, from High Wycombe, a convert who changed his name to Abdul Waheed.

“He converted to Islam about six months ago and grew a full beard,” said a neighbor, who refused to be identified. “He used to smoke weed and drink a lot but he is completely different now.”

12 July 2006 >> The idea was simple enough: give the world a small taste of the political environment that college students face every day.

How many people outside academia realize the degree to which classrooms have become political platforms for professors? Who off campus hears that entire press runs of student newspapers routinely “disappear” because they contain opinions that challenge the campus orthodoxy? Who knew professors could be hounded out of their jobs simply for failing to register with the preferred political party?

While campus political correctness has been the subject of magazine articles and books, people rarely get a chance to see the students and professors who suffer very real punishment simply for holding the “incorrect” set of views. Never before have the excesses of the campus power structure been scrutinized in a feature-length documentary film.

Nearly three years ago, I teamed up with Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg to form On The Fence Films, specifically for the purpose of creating films that ask questions other filmmakers weren’t. Our first planned feature-length film would cover the political environment on college campuses.

I am very happy to report that this film, Indoctrinate U, is now being shown to distributors and should be released this fall. We are also setting up a campus tour to coincide with the release; I’ll be traveling to schools around the country screening the film.

• Film distributors interested in Indoctrinate U should contact Blaine Greenberg at:
  blaine (AT) onthefencefilms (DOT) com
• Students (or anyone affiliated with a college or university) who want to bring Indoctrinate U to their campus can request a screening.

Indoctrinate U covers a number of stories never before shown on screen. Some of the stories are bizarre and so hard to believe that you may end up researching them yourself. And if you do, you’ll realize that the truth on campus truly is stranger than fiction. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s frightening, and sometimes, it’s just plain depressing.

We haven’t posted our trailer online yet, but in the meantime, here’s a bit of a tease.

7 July 2006 @ 3:06PM >> Although former Taliban spokesman Rahmatullah Hashemi has been rejected from Yale’s Eli Whitney Students Program, the current Yale student is being invited back for another year in Yale’s non-degree studies program:

Hashemi, 27, spent last year studying at Yale through the Nondegree Students Program. He can return to Yale and remain in that program next year if he wishes, Tatiana Maxwell — president of the International Education Foundation, which was created to fund Hashemi’s schooling at Yale — told The New York Times. Hashemi gained national attention when The New York Times Magazine ran a profile of Hashemi as its cover story in February.

[...]

John Fund, a Wall Street Journal columnist who has been covering the Hashemi controversy, said the decision seems to placate all parties involved.

“It is a purposefully muddled end,” Fund wrote in an e-mail. “I think everyone here is trying to save face ...Yale can claim they didn’t bend to pressure, sponsors can claim he can still get his U.S. education.”

[...]

While some students and teachers — including many of those who interacted directly with Hashemi — supported his presence at Yale, others did not view the issue as favorably. Two alumni, Clint Taylor ‘96 and Debbie Bookstaber ‘00, launched a campaign and Weblog called NailYale — a name that makes reference to the rumored Taliban practice of removing the nails of women who wear noticeable nail polish — encouraging alumni to forego donations to Yale until the University’s decision to admit Hashemi was more fully explained. Members of Yale’s Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity wore T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Taliban man, go home!” for their year-end TANG competition this spring.

[...]

Taylor, who has been critical of Yale’s decision to allow Hashemi on campus from the start, said Yale likely felt the pressure of the building dissent about Hashemi’s presence at Yale.

23 March 2006 >> Political correctness, British-style:

Teachers at nursery schools in Oxfordshire, England, have asked children to change the words of “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” to “Baa, Baa, Rainbow Sheep” to avoid the possibility of offending anyone.

Wait a minute, if using the word “black” to describe sheep in this children’s song is supposedly offensive to black humans, then wouldn’t changing it to “rainbow” just end up offending everybody?

This isn’t the first time nursery rhymes have fallen victim to the British PC campaign. In 2003, the Mothercare store chain in England began selling cassette tapes and CDs featuring a new version of Humpty Dumpty in which there was a happy ending. The new version said that “Humpty Dumpty opened his eyes, falling down was such a surprise, Humpty Dumpty counted to 10, then Humpty Dumpty got up again.”

[...]

Most have argued that “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” has nothing to do with race. The nursery rhyme dates back to the mid-1700s and is related to a tax imposed on wool by the king [...]. Black wool was apparently taxed at a lower rate than white wool.

Sounds like the white sheep should find a lawyer. They’ve got a discrimination case on their hands.

Stuart Chamberlain, manager of the Family Center in Abingdon, England, and the nearby Sure Start Center in Sutton Courtenay, told the Oxford Star weekly newspaper that the nursery schools had changed the words of “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” to follow stringent equal-opportunity rules.

“No one should feel pointed out because of their race, their gender, or anything else,” he said.

Not even sheep.

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Update: The veracity of this story is being disputed by Parents and Children Together, a charity that runs some of the nurseries cited in the article linked above. However, it appears that no such denials have been issued by the Family Center or the Sure Start Center.

6 March 2006 >> I don’t watch the Oscars any year, so my missing it this year does not represent any form of boycott. And now that you know I didn’t watch it, please allow me to indulge myself by commenting on something about which I have no first-hand knowledge. (Isn’t that a requirement for blogging?)

From what I’ve read, the Academy Awards ceremony was light on the now-expected political lectures (George Clooney’s self-back-patting seems to be the one mild exception). Even the slate of winners was less political than some people—including me—predicted.

I was way off.

Well, I’ve learned my lesson. (No I haven’t.) I will no longer pull predictions out of thin air and present them as impending fact. (Yes I will; I just can’t help myself.) Next year, I will make no Oscar predictions. (I might.) And if I do, by then, nobody will remember this pledge. (Damn. I forgot this post will be permalinked.)

3 February 2006 @ 9:33AM >> Since the beginning of the year, both Microsoft and Google have seen self-inflicted public relations disasters stem from their decisions to censor political content deemed inconvenient by the Chinese government. Now, Microsoft has decided to make own employees over its abrupt censoring of a Chinese blogger, Microsoft Corp. has formulated a new policy to deal with requests from a government that alleges that posted material violates its laws.

The measures were detailed by Microsoft’s top lawyer, Brad Smith, at the Government Leaders Forum in Lisbon today.

Smith said Microsoft will remove blogs only when given proper legal notice. And even then, it will block access to that material only within the country where it is deemed unlawful. The site will still be viewable from outside the country, he said.

[...]

“Obviously, what we are trying to do with the kinds of principles we articulated today is ... obey the law in the countries in which we do business but also pay appropriate respect to the needs of our users, both those who put information up on a blog and those who want to read that information around the world,” Smith said.

28 January 2006 @ 11:25AM >> Google has been taking a lot of flak, rightfully so, for censoring search results to satisfy the Chinese communist dictatorship.

The search engine is placing notices on each page notifying users that items have been censored at the request of the Chinese government, so it isn’t quite as bad as Microsoft’s actions to placate the Chinese, which include taking down entire websites without notice, rendering them inaccessible to the entire world. Google’s censorship applies only to the version of the search engine aimed at the Chinese market. Still, for a company whose motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” the action is at best hypocritical, and it shows the slogan to be nothing more than empty P.R. sermonizing.

The simplest illustration of the moral compromise made by the Don’t Be Evil company comes from Jonah Goldberg, who recommends searching for “Tiananmen” on Chinese Google and comparing that to the results from the uncensored Google. That’s right, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, an inconvenient historical fact for the repressive Chinese regime, has gone down the memory hole thanks to the good folks at Google.

I’ve refined the search a bit for an even starker contrast. Here’s what comes up in the standard Google image search for “Tiananmen Square Massacre”, and here’s the scrubbed version on Chinese Google.

What makes Google’s actions even more hypocritical is that, just a week before this Google flap erupted, the company was hailed by privacy advocates for refusing to turn over to the U.S. Justice Department aggregate data on searches for child pornography. What a brave stand!

So Google has the backbone to rebuff to the U.S. government’s attempts to fight child porn, but the Don’t Be Evil company is willing to help China continue to repress its people by erasing moments from history like the Tiananmen Square massacre.

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Update: Google’s blocks on certain words can apparently be avoided by a little creative misspelling.

22 December 2005 @ 3:52PM >> The three-day New York City transit strike is over and the Transport Workers Union has agreed to go back to the bargaining table.

When the contract talks are through, Metropolitan Transportation Authority should immediately begin investigating upgrading the subway system to replace all train drivers with automated systems. A number of other cities have proven such systems workable, and there’s no reason why the largest subway system in the world should be vulnerable to another shutdown by an egomaniacal union boss. The taxpayers of New York should not be expected to underwrite the salaries of people whose jobs can be done more cheaply, efficiently and without complaint by machines. We are already the most heavily-taxed citizenry in the country.

If the TWU rank-and-file has any wisdom, they’d replace Roger Toussaint as their president. In his press conferences, Toussaint spent most of his time whining about not getting enough respect from the MTA, yet he showed New Yorkers about as much respect as a dog does to a fire hydrant. And in a few short days, he made himself the most hated man in New York City and managed to turn this liberal city into an anti-union town.

I’m sure there are many decent, responsible members of the TWU who disagreed with his tactics and were embarrassed by his antics. They need to make their voices heard, or the damage to their union will be irreparable. This ill will won’t dissipate soon.

6 December 2005 @ 11:58AM >> PriceRitePhoto, the company involved in the apparent attempt to fleece customer Thomas Hawk (covered previously), has apologized for its abusive, unethical, and probably illegal behavior. Considering the store received tons of bad virtual press and several hundred crank calls, there may be less sincerity than necessity behind the apology.