10 October 2011 @ 4:57PM >>InsideAcademia.tv’s Andy Nash recently interviewed me via Skype, and the interview is now available online:
We discuss the history of campus political correctness, what inspired me to make the film Indoctrinate U, and the effects of the continued politicization of academia.
11 March 2009 >>
I was pleased to have been invited on CNN to discuss Indoctrinate U with Lou Dobbs, but I was blown away at how complimentary he was. Dobbs called the film “terrific” and said, “I can’t recommend it highly enough.” He closed by recommending that viewers “get this documentary. It’s extraordinary.”
In related news, Indoctrinate U will be shown at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival on Tuesday, March 24th at 6:00PM. The film will be shown at the Village East Cinema, on 12th Street and Second Avenue. Tickets are available online.
1 February 2009 >>
Here’s a TV report from 1981 predicting the future of newspapers. What’s interesting is how much of it misses the mark...and how much of it doesn’t.
23 January 2009 @ 9:01AM >>
Apparently, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore are trying to do my work for me. I can’t find a better illustration of the disturbing cult-like quality among President Barack Obama’s more enthusiastic supporters than this video put together by the celebrity duo:
Movie star Susan Sarandon compared President Obama to Jesus. Broadway and film actor Alan Cumming thought of him more like Mahatma Gandhi.
“He is a community organizer like Jesus was,” Sarandon said Tuesday night on the bright blue carpet leading into the Creative Coalition’s 2009 Ball at the Harman Center for the Arts in Chinatown. “And now, we’re a community and he can organize us.”
I get why people like our new president. I understand the historical significance of his election. And there is one thing about his election that makes me very happy: it disproves the leftist slander that America is a racist, bigoted country.
But all this pledging to blindly follow and serve The Leader not only highlights the intellectual unseriousness of the pledgers, it also shows that none of these folks know enough history to understand where this sort of groupthink can lead.
Keith John Sampson, a student at Indiana University - Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI), was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book about a riot that took place in 1924 between Notre Dame students and the Ku Klux Klan.
Called Notre Dame vs. The Klan, the book’s author describes it as a discussion of a historical event and a celebration of the defeat of the white supremacist terrorist group in that event.
In an odd twist, the very book that led to Sampson’s racial harassment “conviction” was carried in the school’s own library!
But that didn’t stop the IUPUI’s Affirmative Action Office from finding Sampson giulty of racial harassment.
You can watch Andrew Marcus’s coverage of this case here:
If this is the kind of story that infuriates you, check out Indoctrinate U if you haven’t already.
25 August 2008 @ 9:10AM >>
Barack Obama launched his political career with a fundraiser in the house of Bill Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist who—along with his wife Bernardine Dohrn—founded a radical Marxist group in the 1960s called the Weather Underground.
The Weather Underground was responsible for a number of bombings around the United States, including the U.S. Capitol building and the Pentagon.
On the morning that the World Trade Center was collapsing, the New York Timesran an article on Ayers in which he was quoted as saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” You have to wonder whether Ayers felt some level of glee watching the news that day.
The relationship between Ayers and Obama is extensive: for years, they worked together on a project called the Annenberg Challenge.
You’d think the media would delve into this relationship a little. If John McCain kicked off his political career at the house of, say, a bomber of abortion clinics, you probably would have heard about it by now. But the media, so clearly in love with Barack Obama, isn’t doing its job.
In election cycles a decade or more ago, that would have mattered more. But with the establishment media’s weakening grip on controlling coverage—ask John Edwards about that—the old gatekeepers can’t prevent this news from being discussed.
If anything, the media’s reluctance to discuss Obama’s shady connections may end up torpedoing the Democrats’ chances of taking back the White House. Ironic that the media’s desire to see Obama elected ended up causing the Democrats to nominate someone who might be the least electable candidate.
Because the media hasn’t been doing its job covering Obama’s connection to Bill Ayers, ads like this one are going to resonate this fall:
The second video shows what happens when a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice comes to give a speech on campus. In Welcome Wagon NYC, students at NYU Law School object quite strongly to the presence of Antonin Scalia, giving him a reception worse than the President of Iran received at that other large Manhattan institution, Columbia University.
7 February 2008 @ 9:22AM >>
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group featured in Indoctrinate U for their role in defending the free speech and free thought rights of students and professors alike, has launched a video project highlighting their work. Andrew Marcus and I worked on their first two videos, the first of which FIRE released yesterday:
This video [...] serves as an introduction to FIRE, its principles and issues, and its commitment to liberty on campus. It then turns to FIRE’s case at San Francisco State University, where students endured a months-long investigation for stomping on Hamas and Hezbollah flags during an anti-terrorism protest.
18 November 2007 @ 12:26PM >>
Jared Lapidus, who got his start in professional filmmaking shooting footage for Indoctrinate U, has just released a short film he directed called The Libel Tourist.
The film covers the abuses of exceedingly loose, plantiff-friendly libel laws in Britain, where American authors can now be sued for books never published there.
As long as a single after-market copy of a book is sold in Britain—such as on eBay or Amazon’s used books section—British courts can claim jurisdiction and rule against authors for things that would be protected First Amendment speech here in the U.S.
The Libel Tourist covers an issue that’s going to become increasingly important in a world where it’s next to impossible to contain the written word within a single country’s borders.
25 October 2007 @ 9:07AM >>
Last night, David Horowitz came to speak at Emory University as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, an event created to highlight the human rights abuses committed in the name of Islam around the world. Horowitz started off by showing a picture of a woman being shot in the head for “sexual improprieties.” In some Muslim cultures, sexual impropriety includes being a victim of rape, something for which countless women have been killed in an attempt to restore the “honor” of the rape victim’s family.
It used to be that leftists would be outraged by such a thing. After all, they claim to sympathize with the oppressed. But these days, when women are killed for being the victims of rape, or when gays are executed for being who they are, leftists first must look into who is doing the killing. If it’s a Muslim doing the killing, then for some reason, it is excusable.
That’s because there is a hierarchy of political correctness, where one group’s rights can be superceded by another group’s rights depending on which group is viewed as more oppressed by Westerners. This leads to some rather strange double-standards: if a Christian opposes gay marriage on religious grounds, he’d be branded a bigot and would be blacklisted from campus. But if a Muslim leads a country that routinely executes gays, he would be welcomed with open arms.
This is the environment into which David Horowitz stepped when he tried to demonstrate the very real crimes against humanity that are committed in the name of Islam. So, naturally, the leftists at Emory University had to make sure that Horowitz’s speech got shut down: in today’s politically correct world, the “rights” of radical Muslims to murder women who run afoul of Sharia law apparently trumps the right of David Horowitz to criticize those murders. So, naturally, Horowitz needed to be silenced.
The Emory University College Republicans, which sponsored Horowitz’s speech, issued a press release describing what happened:
On Wednesday evening, the Emory University Chapter of the College Republicans hosted acclaimed author and activist David Horowitz for a lecture on radical Islam as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. From the beginning of Horowitz’s speech, rowdy protesters continually interrupted him and less than half an hour into the event, the crowd became so disruptive that police were called in and Horowitz had to be escorted off stage.
Over 300 people - a cross-section of students, professors, and Atlanta community members - packed into White Hall where the event was held. The audience included a wide range of Leftists from Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as Muslim groups such as the Muslim Student Association. In addition, members of “National Project to Defend Dissent & Critical Thinking in Academia,” an organization dedicated to opposing Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events throughout the country, participated in the protests dressed in orange attire as a reference to Guantanamo Bay. There was also a sizable group of men and women dressed in traditional Muslim garb as well as students wearing Kafiyehs, a symbol of Arab solidarity.
“I’ve spoken at Emory University several times and I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Horowitz responding to the crowd as they shouted and jeered. “This is exactly what the fascists did in Germany in the 1930s.” Protesters began their efforts as soon as Horowitz was introduced with boos and chants of “Heil Hitler.” Despite the people who stood with their backs to Horowitz and the shouting of obscenities and other remarks from audience members, Horowitz attempted to deliver his speech that covered academic freedom and radical Islam. The loud chants, sign-waving, and disruptive gestures continued to escalate from audience members until the atmosphere was so chaotic that even the police present were unable to subdue the crowd. Horowitz was led off stage and left the campus under tight security, and the event came to an abrupt end.
This is yet another example of how college campuses no longer have any tolerance for diversity of thought. Free speech is only welcome on campus if you say the right things.
11 October 2007 @ 3:32PM >>
Michael Totten brought his video camera along on a foot patrol in Ramadi, the capital of the once-violent Anbar province in Iraq. He returns with 18 minutes showing what happens when it’s time for the barbed wire to come down.
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.
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.
20 June 2007 @ 8:18AM >>
As Hollywood gears up the hype machine to promote Michael Moore’s most recent political advertisement, it would be wise to remember that entrusting your health to government bureaucrats does have its risks. A look at Canada’s government-run system shows what happens to those who fall through the cracks: permanent, life-altering damage or even death.
Free Market Cure, a newly-launched website, provides some facts you might not see in Moore’s film. The site already contains four short videos covering healthcare issues, with more to come.
Michael J. Totten’s latest dispatch from Iraq, “Meet the Iraqi Police in Kirkuk,” contains a compelling four-minute video taken after Iraqi police arrested the driver of a vehicle whose passenger was shooting at a crowd. The video is half-way down the page, embedded in one of Totten’s characteristically vivid reports.
Totten is a groundbreaking reporter—calling him a blogger seems to diminish the stature of his work—who writes (and now films) from all over the Middle East thanks to contributions from people who find his work valuable. If you think as highly of his work as I do, please dump a few coins in the tip jar at the end of his post.
24 March 2007 @ 10:54AM >>
In Canada, decisions about health care services are made by political appointees. So naturally, the provisioning of such services becomes politicized.
Few people know this more acutely than Janice Fraser. She needed a bladder operation but was told that, under Canada’s strictly regulated national health system, the hospital was only allowed to perform 12 such operations a year. At her position on the waiting list, she’d have to wait nearly three years. Janice wasn’t going to be able to wait that long; she was running the risk of wearing an external urine bag for the rest of her life.
So Janice hoped that she’d be able to make a personal appeal to Ontario’s Health Minister, a man named George Smitherman. Unfortunately for Janice, Smitherman didn’t have time to meet with her. He was too busy meeting with other constituents, including a man living as Susan Gapka. The time Gapka spent with the Health Minister helped convince him to support government coverage of sex change operations.
Two Women, a new short film by Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg (the executive producers of Indoctrinate U) shows how putting health care decision-making in the hands of politicians yields decisions that are politically motivated. Instead of serving individuals like Janice, politicians would rather pick up votes in blocks by catering to interest groups.
For Janice Fraser, who did not belong to a politically correct interest group, the results were tragic.
18 March 2007 >>
I just got back home from taping Hannity’s America a little while ago. It airs tonight on Fox News.
Knowing the show airs tonight gave us a hard deadline for finally completing the Indoctrinate U website. So while a total lack of sleep over the last 3 days probably didn’t help my coherence with Sean Hannity (I don’t even really remember what I said, but hopefully it made sense), at least we were able to get everything working on the site, including the trailer and an innovative sign-up feature that gave me a chance to write some code for Google Maps. More on that later. For now, I’m going to start a belated St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
Update: Wouldn’t you know it, my cable is out. So I guess I won’t be taping it... Thanks, Time Warner!
27 January 2007 @ 5:38AM >>
For some reason, most Manhattanites I know reflexively oppose Wal-Mart setting up shop in our slender island borough. However, there are at least three women here who don’t. And, as if by coincidence, they all managed to simultaneously occupy the same room.
16 January 2007 >>
Britain’s Observerreports that “[a]n undercover investigation has revealed disturbing evidence of Islamic extremism at a number of Britain’s leading mosques and Muslim institutions, including an organisation praised by the Prime Minister.”:
Secret video footage reveals Muslim preachers exhorting followers to prepare for jihad, to hit girls for not wearing the hijab, and to create a ’state within a state’. Many of the preachers are linked to the Wahhabi strain of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, which funds a number of Britain’s leading Islamic institutions.
A forthcoming Channel 4 Dispatches programme paints an alarming picture of how preachers in some of Britain’s most moderate mosques are urging followers to reject British laws in favour of those of Islam. Leaders of the mosques have expressed concern at the preachers’ activities, saying they were unaware such views were being disseminated.
At the Sparkbrook mosque, run by UK Islamic Mission (UKIM), an organisation that maintains 45 mosques in Britain and which Tony Blair has said ‘is extremely valued by the government for its multi-faith and multicultural activities’, a preacher is captured on film praising the Taliban. In response to the news that a British Muslim solider was killed fighting the Taliban, the speaker declares: ‘The hero of Islam is the one who separated his head from his shoulders.’
Another speaker says Muslims cannot accept the rule of non-Muslims. ‘You cannot accept the rule of the kaffir [non-Muslim],’ a preacher, Dr Ijaz Mian, tells a meeting held within the mosque. ‘We have to rule ourselves and we have to rule the others.’
Britain’s Jihadists aren’t stupid. They know that the soft underbelly of the West is our blind support of multiculturalism. Assimilation is rejected in favor of each community maintaining its own separate oasis. And thanks to political correctness, anyone who questions the wisdom of this is immediately branded an insensitive bigot. So most Westerners, whose social behaviors have been molded by an educational system in which being labeled a racist is perhaps the worst human offense, keep quiet because the threat of Jihadists among them is not yet apparent. The question is, will the West wake up before it’s too late? Only time will tell.
8 January 2007 >>Mine Your Own Business is a soon-to-be-released film documenting the detrimental effects that trendy environmentalists can have on underprivileged communities throughout the world. Not every society has yet been fortunate enough to reap the economic benefits of the industrial revolution, and some activists want to keep it that way, preferring to impose impoverishment on other cultures in the name of quaintness.
You can view the trailer for Mine Your Own Businesson YouTube or read more about the film here.
The film debuts in New York on Friday, January 19th and in Washington, D.C. on January 24th. Both screenings start at 7PM. If you wish to attend either screening, you can sign up here.
Disclosure:Mine Your Own Business was created with the assistance of the Moving Picture Institute, which was also instrumental in enabling the completion of another soon-to-be-released film, Indoctrinate U.
6 December 2006 >>
Filmmaking cohort Stuart Browning has posted a new short video over at the On The Fence Films. A Short Course in Brain Surgery looks at the plight of Canadians under their “single payer” health care system.
When things don’t work out so well under Canada’s government monopoly, you know what some Canadians do? They come here, to get treated in a matter of days for procedures that they wait months or years for just a few miles further north.
I have no doubt that the new Democratic majority will eventually try to bring Canada’s system here. Before they do, every American should see A Short Course in Brain Surgery and the earlier companion film, Dead Meat.
(Next on the plate for On The Fence Films: a trailer for Indoctrinate U. Finally!)
